Tag: lonely

Transitioned

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It’s hard for me to say the “D word” about Scott. I have said it. I have written it. But I don’t like it.I don’t like it at all.

He isn’t dead. His body is; I know that and that’s the part I hate. He isn’t physically here anymore and that hurts every single day. But he isn’t dead because God is not dead. My husband is alive in Christ. He has just transitioned to a new way of being. His body died, yes. He died at the hands of others. I cannot alter that reality any more than I could stop the swells at sea. And I ache over these facts every day.

My God is a deliverer and a healer. He makes all things new. Because of this, my husband’s transition was a glorious moment for him, contrasting sharply with his last hours in his earthly body. For this I am grateful. But the moment he came into glory was the moment my own worst nightmare began. For that, I am bereft of happiness and I don’t know how long that part is going to last.

I experience joy, but joy and happiness are not the same thing. Joy is an inner sanctum, a place inside your heart where you can experience positivity even when your mind cannot feel happiness at all. Our children bring me joy. Our granddaughter brings me joy. Happiness is something that seems to get farther and farther away in my rear view and I wonder if I’ll recognize it when it returns. I suppose it’s like him, though. I’d recognize him anywhere and I’ll know him immediately when my time of glory comes. Maybe one day I’ll have the opportunity to experience happiness in that way while I’m still here and I’ll know it instantly, too. I feel like being happy will come as a surprise, like hearing an urban legend many times and then discovering that it was true all along.

People say “I’m so sorry for your loss.” And it has been an enormous loss for me. But my husband is not lost. He’s just in a place where I cannot reach him, like being on deployment in the desert of Iraq and not having the ability to call home. I only wish he could even write to me from where he lives now. And that I could write back.

I haven’t had any dreams of him yet. I actually rarely even remember my dreams from sleep. I had the most ridiculous dream last week. I very realistically dreamed (apparently) that I had received an Amazon package, something I had ordered in real life. I hunted all over the house for where I had put it. I distinctly remembered opening the box, pulling out the caffeinated, orange mint flavored breath mints I had purchased, separating them into smaller ziploc bags (I spilled some) so that I could give some to my daughter-in-love who is in nursing school, put some in my purse, and saving the rest to keep here at home.

So, as I said, I searched for them everywhere because grief brain makes you terribly absent-minded and I assumed I had set them down somewhere, tucked them into a drawer, or foolishly placed them in a spot that makes no sense (like when I found my lost toothbrush in the kitchen cabinet. But, alas, no mints. I never even thought about checking Amazon to see if they had been delivered yet because I distinctly remembered them arriving. A couple of days later, I got a box in the mail and was surprised to find caffeinated orange mint flavored breath mints inside. Well, they must have accidentally sent them twice, obviously. And yet when I opened the box, they were larger than I expected them to be. Did they send a different kind? That’s when I checked Amazon and found that these were the ones I had been expecting. It ever-so-slowly occurred to me that I had woken up thinking about those mints because it was a dream. Truly incredulous, all I could think was “If I had to have a dream that was that realistic, why couldn’t Scott have been in it?”

People talk about all of these signs you see of people who have moved on from this life. I haven’t witnessed any signs. I know that if there were a way for him to be here other than in my memories, he would do so. But he is in a new place, a new home, a new spiritual body. Maybe one day he’ll come to me in some way (I pray for that and ask him to do so all the time) but it just hasn’t happened yet. I still talk to him every day as if he were here. I still tell him I love him and that I miss him all the time. I still love him and miss him all the time.

Scott’s transition from this life to the next was infinitely harder for me than it was for him. I don’t begrudge him that because what he suffered prior to that moment of beauty for him was overwhelmingly traumatic. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully heal from the terror of those hours and minutes. I’m glad that he has and that he doesn’t have to remember a moment of them because there is no pain or fear where is now. in the same way, it will be infinitely harder for my children than it will be for me when my time comes to leave.

For Scott, transition was a thing of beauty. For me, the transition from wife to widow, from soulmate to loss, has been calamitous. So transition, you see, is a matter of perspective.

My perspective is this:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

No, joy is not the same thing as happiness because we wouldn’t count it all happiness when we face trials of many kinds. But I am joyful in the fact that my husband no longer suffers the many trials he faced on this earth. There is no heartbreak. There is no anguish. There is no fear. There is no loss. Not for him. And yet the same event that brought him into that new reality forces me into the one I live now. And I will count it all joy, for one day I will also be mature and complete, not lacking anything, as well.

It Isn’t Their Sea

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I’m bleeding but somehow no one can see the blood draining every living breath from my body.  

I’m laying here, riddled with bullet holes, bright red blood pouring from every entry and exit wound.

But they go on about their business. Life is a hurry-scurry event.

No one realizes that they may slide dangerously on the thick but slippery, scarlet, coppery-tasting substance at any moment if they’re near me.

They’re not ignoring.  They’re not cold.  They’re not cruel.

They just cannot see the flood rising beneath their feet because it isn’t their sea.

The Breath of Life

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God fixed my broken pieces, but He did it by way of a soulmate he grew, hand-plucked and then planted right into my life. Now my pieces are struggling to remain attached to each other.

My mind keeps going back, over and over and over, to the moment the doctors walked down the hallway toward me, the disastrous results of my husband’s code blue evident on their faces. I cannot stop feeling what it was like to pleadingly and raggedly cry out “No…NO…NOOOOOOO!!!” and then slide down the wall in sobs as my legs failed to hold my weight.

I think I “knew” when I left his room. I’m a nurse. Not only was he not breathing but he had no airway. In the back of my mind I knew the statistics. I knew the potential and likely outcomes at that point. I knew my likelihood of loss. But I was praying for a miracle. I was holding onto hope like I was falling off of a cliff where the raveling thread of someone’s threadbare sweater was all I had to hold onto. I spent about an hour, give or take, grasping that tiny thread so tightly that it wore shreds into the skin of my palms. Or maybe that was my fingernails.

And then I drowned.

I could feel myself suffocating as I slid down the wall. As one doctor said “go get her a chair” and then told me to tuck my head and breathe. I had been holding onto the ICU visitor phone asking if my husband had been brought over yet when I heard them coming down the hall toward me and I remember seeing the handset hanging from the cord, the cord dangling, as I sat in a crumpled heap on the cold hallway floor. I remember men who had walked toward me, four abreast, all of their faces dour, the one clearly intending to deliver the news just a step ahead of the rest searching my face as he prepared to end my life as I knew it. And I could not breathe. I don’t even know how the cries for mercy made their way out except for the breath of wind that caught in my throat as they approached.

My chest clenched. I don’t know what happened to my heart but if you told me it had stopped beating right then, it would not surprise me. I wonder if that’s what cardiac arrest feels like. I wonder if my husband felt like that, too.

I read a post the other day where a widow said that her husband had “died” once before, during a heart attack, for several minutes while they resuscitated him. When he “died permanently” several years later he wasn’t afraid to go. He had told her that during that first time, he knew exactly when he left his body because the pain stopped entirely, there was suddenly no fear and a sensation he could only define as “euphoria and complete peace” overcame him. He thought to himself that he was leaving this earth and he was okay with it. He didn’t bewail the fact that he was leaving others behind but just knew he was safe and that it was okay. He was okay and they’d all be okay.

I hope that’s what it was like for my husband. Of all of the people I know in this world, my husband 100% deserved peace. He spent many years of his life not having it.

There’s a part of me that wishes he’d know how much we miss him, how much we mourn his loss, but not when I think of what that would put him through. So I guess I just want him to know how much and how completely he was loved and how important he was to people here. I hope he knows now that he made a difference, left a legacy of goodness, kindness, compassion, empathy. And I wish I could see his sweet face when he realized that. I loved the way his face lit up because someone really saw him. When someone saw him as the person I already knew he was.

We take breathing for granted. Air goes in; air comes out. We don’t even think about it most of the time. I’ve had many days since that night, well, that early, early morning, where I had to force myself to inhale. It truly felt like my body wouldn’t do it automatically. Or to exhale just so new air could come in. I remember thinking, theoretically, if I didn’t breathe right now, how long would it take? It felt unnatural to just breathe. Like it feels unnatural to be here when he isn’t.

I believe my heart shattered into a million, zillion pieces that day so how can it still feel like my heart is breaking? Or does it heal a little and the scabs then get ripped open every time a thought crosses my mind, those hundreds of times a day. That cannot be good for healing but I don’t know how to stop it because I never know from which direction the assault will come barreling toward me. It’s completely indiscernible until it hits, until my heart plummets to the ground again beneath blood and ash.

Four of “Lillian’s fish” (our granddaughter’s) died from lack of oxygen due to the hurricane this past week; I had no generator to power the aerator. Scott named them Lillian’s fish (even though we’d had them since early 2022) because she loved watching them from soon after she arrived on the outside of her mommy. We subsequently picked out even more colorful fish to entertain her. The fact that some of those fish died, ones he wanted her to have (albeit at our house because he thought that would make her ask to come visit more) has made me cry more than once. Going to the store where we bought them to get her a few more tomorrow will make me cry again…hopefully I can hold it until I get to the car. I’d rather lose my bladder in public than fall apart. People “get” medical issues (like whatever they might assume would cause me to urinate on myself) better than they “get” grief. Grief makes people uncomfortable.

But now, when I say “Lillian, where’s PopPop?” (she is eight months old now,) she turns her head and looks to his picture. That made me cry the first time but kind of makes my heart smile now. I tell her “PopPop loves you, Lillian. That’s Lillian’s PopPop.” She studies his photograph in a way that makes it look as if he is familiar even though she was only just over four months old when he died. It’s like she is trying to remember where she saw him and can’t quite place it, her face so serious and contemplative. It’s a poignant experience because she usually gets distracted so easily but she stares at his photo for a long time without looking away.

And so I breathe. There are moments sprinkled, however sparsely right now, throughout my days that cause me to breathe.

According to my research, Ruach is the word spoken three times in Hebrew scripture for the breath of God. It’s not described so much as a physical being or an entity but as God’s essence that creates and sustains life. Sometimes it is translated as “Spirit of God”, the Holy Spirit.

However, the actual Hebrew term for “spirit,” ruah (notice the similarity) is used 389 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Ruah is translated using three different words: wind, breath, and spirit. Context decides the translation, but in Ezekiel it is often used with dual context, like breath and spirit are the same thing.

So the Holy Spirit IS breath. Not all breathe by nature of the Spirit’s breath, although all are invited to, but when my natural breath fails to sustain me, the Holy Spirit can. Yes, at some point my body will fail and the Holy Spirit will leave my earthly domain as my own spirit exits, but when my mind no longer wants to breathe, I have a backup generator as a Christian. I didn’t have to go to Lowe’s and pay a hefty sum for this one as it was bequeathed to me and all I had to do was accept the gift.

If you’ve ever been through a high-force hurricane, you know the value of a good generator. And, oh, have I been living in the eye of a hurricane these past almost-four-months. I’ve been living on the strength of my generator ever since the power went out in May.

I’m just going to keep filling up that generator with fuel because without it my life is so very much more uncomfortable…which doesn’t even seem possible but, alas, it is true. It turns out that the Word and prayer are the only fuel it accepts. The dual power generator I have at home (which spontaneously elected not to function following hurricane Idalia this past week) works on gasoline or propane. They’re a lot more expensive.

As you read this, I hope this week finds you healthy. If you are grieving, I hope you have the generator of breath. If you don’t, I know where you can find one for free.

Guilt is an Ugly Dinner Date

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May 16th, 2023

Being an experienced critical care nurse and being completely unable to save someone you love, your person, your own heartbeat, is a whole new level of pain. I’d have twenty kidney stones back to back if he could be here to walk me through it again instead of living through what happened to him with me being useless at his bedside.

This isn’t a call for sympathy; I just saw someone else express the same agony this morning and I want you to know that, although everyone will tell you there was absolutely nothing else you could have done (and I know there wasn’t anything because I was playing on someone else’s home field and had no control) if you still feel the gut-wrenching guilt just because of what you know from your training and career, you are not alone and you aren’t crazy for not being able to dismiss it.

I should probably give trigger warnings on my posts for awhile because writing is what helps me clear my head; it always has been. And when I write and share it, usually here and/on FB, it is somehow cathartic for me because I know that we all feel alone in this world sometimes but we’re all the same in so many ways. There are others like me, like you, out there who have the same hurts you do and sometimes it just helps to know that. So I share for myself, the release of it, as well as for others to know they aren’t the only ones struggling. We do not struggle alone.

My mantra during the most painful time of my life before now, that I had no idea was only a drop in the bucket, was one of two things: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” or “Jesus, I trust you” over and over again. And so it is again. And He is sufficient, as much as it doesn’t feel like it right now. I can’t trust my feelings but I can trust in Him.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9

I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: So shall I be saved from mine enemies. Psalm 18:3

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and they are safe.
Proverbs 18:10

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10:13

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27

The Last Day and the First Day

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May 10th, 2023

In the early hours of this morning, my beautiful, wonderful, husband, the soulmate God sent to me, the man who would do anything for me, any of our children, or someone he just met, went to be with my Jesus.  I don’t want to discuss details, please.  He had a scheduled surgery and he passed away afterwards.  

Many of you were family to us, some were part of families we created together, some of you who are very far away and some near.  Scott made family everywhere he went.  He was friendly, goofy in the most endearing way, so very lovable, and so very giving.  He changed my life from the actual day I met him.  I knew the day I met him that God had just flipped the script in my life in the most magnificent way.  He taught a very headstrong, independent woman that it’s okay to depend on someone else.  I didn’t want to “need” a man but after I met Scott I knew that I did and now, he’s gone and I still do.  I was his and he was mine from the very start.  Some of you watched this happen right on the sidelines and teased us about it unmercifully, but we stuck out our tongues and didn’t even mind.  

I keep saying that I can’t believe this is my life now.  I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep doing life without him but we have five boys and two granddaughters so I’m going to figure it out because of all of them.  I just don’t know how to yet.

If you have messaged or texted me, thank you.  I’m trying to get through them a little at a time.  I’m not ignoring you; I’m just living in some kind of fog.

There aren’t enough words for me to tell you who Scott was.  He was truly one in a million and life will never be the same.

My Grief Journey

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There have been two HUGE losses in my life in the last two months. I don’t know how to recover. The boat feels as if it has filled, already, with so much water, that I’ll never be able to dump enough buckets to keep from sinking.

On April 23, 2023 my 14 year old nephew died…suicide. He was so very young. So full of life and joy. My sister said he was full of color and noise and, with him, it made perfect sense to me. It was so unexpected and shocking. My family reeled from the loss and from the questions…why? My husband and I drove the hour and a half to get to my sister and her family as quickly as we could. We sat in her driveway as police officers and investigators traipsed in and out of her home, documenting the scene.

My sister and her husband were the ones to see him first. They heard a gunshot and ran upstairs to his bedroom, having to kick in the door to get to him. A gruesome scene that no parent should ever have to endure and that will never leave their memory.

We spent the next two weeks with them, making arrangements, fielding phone calls and text messages, helping organize food deliveries and visitors, and just trying to provide any comfort or relief that we could.

I didn’t know then that those were the last two weeks my husband and I would have together.

We went home for my middle son’s graduation from college and then for the couple of days before my husband was scheduled for a “routine” and common surgery. Something our surgeon had performed hundreds of times. The details of what happened are not important at this moment except that my husband died just after midnight following his surgery. Our surgeon was not at fault; there was a complication that is not common but is known to be a risk of this particular surgery. It was a complication that could have been corrected fairly easily but the hospital staff overlooked every warning sign that it was occurring even as we kept begging for someone to help because we, as nurses with a combined 50 years of experience, knew something was not right and we were ignored, treated as if my husband was just experiencing anxiety and I was being an overzealous caregiver as I advocated for treatment for my husband.

I was with him when he coded. I yelled for the nurse to call the code, to get help. I was escorted shortly after to an ICU waiting room where I was told he would be transferred.

He never arrived there. Instead I was approached nearly an hour later by a physician who had responded to the code blue and three other unidentified people, all walking toward me in tandem. He never had to tell me. I saw the look on his face as he walked toward me down the hall and all I remember is screaming “NOOOO!” and sliding down the wall to the floor, a puddle of despair.

And so then my own grief journey began, just fifteen days after my sister’s world had crumbled. I’d walked with her through the beginning of her walk with grief and still had no idea how to keep breathing as I was navigating it myself. My husband was 49 years old. A little younger than I am, even. How did this happen?

I wrote this following passage when my nephew passed away, unknowing that tragedy would soon strike again, and I couldn’t seem to figure out how it had happened. Why? What next? How do I do this? The next few paragraphs are from the day after my sweet nephew died, but also strangely applied the morning I got home from the hospital after my husband dying:

When I put these clothes on yesterday morning, everything was normal. And now I’m still wearing them, but nothing will ever be normal again. It’s irrevocable. 💔 Jesus, help me. Please.

I still don’t understand how you can wake up one morning and everything is “normal”, the day goes the way most of the rest of them go, you’re just living in the beautiful monotony of everyday life…and then it’s gone. The normal is gone, irrevocably, unexplainedly, devastatingly gone. There are why’s that can never be answered. It feels as if the world just stopped, or it swallowed you up, and yet everyone is still moving around, doing normal things, when normal is gone and can never come back. Your heart aches like it’s being squeezed and pummeled and tortured and savagely ripped apart and people you love are suffering in a way that will never, ever allow them to breathe a whole breath again. Terrible, awful things happen to other people, the ones on TV or movies, all the time…but not to us, right?

It was never supposed to be like this. It’s not supposed to be this way. There would have been a warning. Someone turn back the clock. Please, please, please, turn it back. Give me time back. Please.

After my husband, Scott, died, I began to use writing as a tool to process my grief, as I often had in the past. What follows in the upcoming posts are the things I wrote about as grief fell over me in wave upon wave, crashing and pounding me into something that felt unrecognizable. The world became unfamiliar. Time didn’t make sense as it somehow moved quickly and agonizingly slowly at the same time. The only way I knew to sort out and process what I was feeling was to write about it, get it down in print so that I could read back over it, change the wording to match the way it really felt, and then wait for the next wave to crest.

My hope in posting this is that, in some way, my thoughts will reach someone who is suffering a similar path and that, as some of these feelings resonate with you, you will realize that you are not alone. You are not “going crazy,” because, believe me, it feels like it sometimes. You’ll realize that the things you’re being forced to experience are normal for this process and, most importantly, that you will live through it.

As I’m typing this introduction, I confess that I am not yet on the other side of this Category 5 hurricane, the storm that still rages over my everyday life. I don’t even know if there is “another side” to come out on. As I begin posting my journal pages to you, two months have passed since he died. Two months since the last time that I saw his face when he was alive and breathing. Two months since the last day he said “I love you, baby,” and I said it back.

In much of these journal pages that will follow, I am speaking myself into healthy patterns of grieving by giving reminders of the One who holds my future and to turn to Him when I am lost, alone, sobbing, screaming, questioning, and distraught.

God didn’t “take him too soon.” Neither of them, actually. I don’t even believe that God caused his death. It was a result of the prevalence of sin in our world, like so many other things that take place here. People who made poor decisions about his care caused it. Lack of empathy caused it. Lack of professionalism caused it. Maybe even some ignorance caused it, although it doesn’t seem that way. The enemy is always seeking ways to destroy those who love Jesus and the willingness of others to engage in sin are ingredients of the perfect recipe.

He almost succeeded with me, in destroying me; he’s still actively trying every single day. Those are all things that I have had to come to terms with forgiving; admittedly, I backtrack on forgiveness at times and then have to lay it all down at the feet of Jesus again. You’ll read of times when my soul cried out in anger comingled with anguish. And you’ll read about how I walk myself back toward Jesus so that I can feel at peace.

My husband knew Jesus. He’s getting to hang out with his own brother, who died just 15 months prior, my step-dad who thought Scott was the cat’s meow, my Granny, whom he never met Earthside but who I know would have absolutely loved him just because of the way he loved me. Scott is living in glory now and I’m thankful for that. He isn’t in pain, isn’t suffering the way we are down here. He is free and is spending his days worshipping. I can’t wait to see him again and get the grand tour.

I hope in reading on, you’ll find a little bit of your own peace. I hope you’ll be drawn to rest in the arms of Jesus when you can find no rest any other way. I hope, in some way, your pain is diminished, even a little, by the words of someone who has traveled a similar path. I hope it feels like I am holding your hand as we manage it together.

In His Love,
Jennifer