I received several stunning flower arrangements from my dearest friends after he died. My favorite local florist, Growing Wild in Manhattan Beach, created them.  They make the most beautiful arrangements, often topped with a sand dollar or starfish and a handmade card wrapped in raffia.  To me, these flowers both honor the dead and seek, in some tiny and momentary way, to soothe the living.  They remind me there is beauty even in times of overwhelming, all-consuming sadness.  Even in the dark and heavy hours following news of death.  Even as time seems to have permanently stopped in pain and despair.

Despair is a frightening place to be. It feels inescapable.  Are flowers meant to jolt us out of despair, even just briefly?  I admit I was for a bit jolted, each time they arrived.  I was newly in awe of each bud.  Each petal.  Each leaf and berry.  The placement of every stem.  The design they created.  The divergent but complimentary colors – the palest pinks, fuchsia, orange, lime, forest green, lemon yellow, lavender and ivory.   One arrangement consisted solely of neutrals — white, ivory and cream flowers, delicately interlaced amongst each other, sharply contrasted by their bottle green stems, light and dark, a play on life and death?  I was seeing flowers for the first time.  They were a piercing reminder of the beauty of nature all around us.  That it lives on, even when we do not. The cycle of life. The planting, the growing, the dying, the re-growth. 

The grief of an ex-spouse, however, is an odd, unrecognized, unwelcome cultural event.  None of the normal mourning customs applies to me.  I am an afterthought. An island carved from the mainland that’s drifted far out to sea. Barely visible, especially in the fog of everyone’s grief.  Except for my closest friends who know the depth and complexity of my emotions.  So, I create my own rituals.  My own path through despair.  I suppose we all do in one way or another.

Part of my grief arises from the cyclical waves of immense sadness that suddenly and unexpectedly overtake me, reminding me that he is gone forever.  That he is never coming back.  That I will not see him at the next major event in my sons’ lives.  That we will not ever again, even temporarily, be that intact family on special occasions.  We will not line up for photos, ignoring the trench that separated us.  We will not be able to build on the new friendship we began just nine months before his death.  Sometimes I find it too difficult to accept that he’s gone. But I know from the death of my brother in 1984 and my sister in 2005 that acceptance is irrelevant. Reality trumps acceptance.

I knew him for over 40 years.  Two-thirds of my life.   He and I share 2 children, in whom I see and hear him every day.  Especially his voice, many of his sayings, some of his mannerisms and some of his passions.  Especially on the phone.  They all sound like him.  My 2 sons, my 2 stepsons and him.  Reminders everywhere. And, oh yes, his “tone.”  How he hated that word.  Despised it.  He wouldn’t say the word, he’d growl it through clenched teeth, almost seething with bitterness.  His first wife apparently regularly accused him of using an unpleasant tone.  After we met, I quickly learned never to mention his tone, or anyone’s tone.  But he would mention it, of his own accord, wanting to tell the origin story, which I’d heard 1000 times.  I’d roll my eyes as if to say, “Now I see why she loathed his tone!”  And other family members, innocently or not, would mention his “tone,” purposefully encouraging his storytelling and thus, his growling. He could tell a story!

Part of my grieving is the leftover trauma from the 2-month period between his diagnosis of Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer and his death.  There is something so cruel about the fact he was diagnosed on May 23^rd and died on July 23^rd.  We were told by the specialist that he had anywhere from 6 months to several years to live, depending upon how he handled chemotherapy and medications.  We all thought we had more time together.  I thought I had space to jam 22 years of missed time into those remaining months or years.  I counted on this gift of time to right all the wrongs, to fix all that had been broken, to create a new (and final) amicable chapter together.  I was busy figuring out how to achieve my goals wholly ignorant of his body’s own timetable.  Or at least willfully blind to it.  Afraid to face it.  Desperately trying to remain optimistic for myself and the 4 boys. 

But his downfall was swift.  It was dramatic and cruel.  We were not at all prepared for what happened to him or the speed with which it occurred.  He had always been such a force in all our lives.  We were not ready for him to falter, to fall, to forget, to fade.  He received the diagnosis as a fully functioning, competent human being. A full-time lawyer, driving, socializing, arguing cases in courthouses across Southern California, making his own meals, taking care of his house, gardening, repairing things, and generally “piddling around” as Oklahomans of his generation often said. As his mother often said. As I often said.  

But within three weeks, he decayed before our very eyes.  He fell several times.  He couldn’t remember what he was doing.  He became confused.  He injured himself. His pain increased.  He started not making sense.  He had intermittent trouble speaking.  We were obviously concerned because he was in and out of delirium, something we had not been warned to expect and we couldn’t understand the reason for it. But it quickly became obvious that he couldn’t work any longer.  He was prescribed medications but there was no one available 24/7 to monitor when or how many he took.

Just as the boys were trying to get him set up at his home with a patchwork of help, he fell again in the middle of the night and was taken to the hospital.  He got Covid.  They ran tests for a concussion.  They found nothing.  They transferred him to a nursing home that accepted Covid patients. It was not a nice place but the options were dismal.  He didn’t want to be there.  We told him it was only temporary until he got over Covid and gained enough strength to undergo chemo and return home.  But we all knew it was a lie.  Probably even him.  We knew he would never return home.  And he did not.

It was extremely difficult for us to visit him at the nursing home, especially for my sons who had never been through anything like this before.  Their father was suddenly dying, and they were only in their 20’s.  The care at this home was appalling.  The heat suffocating.  The organization nonexistent.  The rules inconsistent and nonsensical.  Many other patients were in a terrible state; missing limbs, unwashed, untethered to reality, wheeling themselves around the facility unsupervised.  But the home was at least monitoring his medications and keeping him hydrated, and for that we were grateful.  

He was in a room with 2 other patients.  We weren’t allowed in his room because of the Covid restrictions.  But on my only visit, with my two sons, the staff made us wait outside in a grimy, depressing patio area in 100-degree heat for well over an hour, telling us repeatedly that they were just getting him dressed and would wheel him out in “5 more minutes.”  We kept asking.  They kept repeating the company line.  But they never did bring him out.  We were all absolutely miserable waiting for them to bring him out.  I was losing my patience by the second.

After more than an hour, something inside me snapped.  I became Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment.”  I stormed back inside the home, asked a nurse for his room number, and began speed walking to find his room.  Staff members yelled at me to stop, warned me that they’d have to call Security, and informed me that I was not allowed to go into his room.  I yelled back at them, “Fuck off!”  I told them to, “Go ahead.  Call Security!  I don’t care! I don’t believe you even have any Security.  You don’t seem to have anyone who knows what the fuck they’re doing!”  I told them I’d been waiting over an hour in stifling heat, staff were plentiful, standing around talking, no other visitors were even there, and I was going to “find my husband!”  “My husband.”  I hadn’t said those 2 words in over 20 years. At that moment, he felt like my husband.  I felt protective of him. That I needed to fight for him.

I found his room.  The last room at the end of 4 or 5 winding hallways.  I kept my head down as I walked.  I didn’t want to look in the rooms.  Just at the numbers.  Number 21.  He was in the bed closest to the door.  I walked in and immediately sat on the edge of his bed.  There was nowhere else to sit.  It was cramped. He was awake.  He looked at me with surprise, but warmly.  I was crying by now but wearing the nursing home’s mandatory, restrictive mask so I’m not sure if he could tell.  Three or four nurses or staff caught up with me and came rushing in the room.  They didn’t tell me to leave.  They didn’t call security.  They didn’t yell at me.  One asked me if she could get me anything.  Another handed me a box of tissues.  I told them I just needed to talk to “my husband,” and I’d only be 5 minutes.  I asked them to please give me 5 minutes.  And to tell my sons where I was.

They left, promising to tell the boys.  He was laying in bed, frail, in a twisted blue hospital gown, in diapers, a shadow of his former self in just a few weeks time.  He hadn’t even been told we were there.  They hadn’t tried to get him dressed.  They’d done nothing. It didn’t matter at that point.  It was impossible to absorb how much he’d changed in just a few weeks.  I was in shock.  I knew then it was likely the last time I’d ever see him.  I took both of his hands and held them in mine.  He could barely move them.  I held them to my chest.  I made a joke about not feeling up the visitors.  I think he got it.  He smiled, anyway.  My throat was clogged with sadness.  I could barely talk.  The other patients had their TV’s blaring, annoying me but apparently not him, which told me he wasn’t aware of his surroundings.  

I asked him if he’d like to go on a trip with me one last time.  He nodded and smiled.  So, I took him to Italy, a place we’d never been. In our imaginations. I described how we drank wine in cafés overlooking the Mediterranean.  How we stared at the stars dotting the night sky from our hotel suite.  How we went sailing in the bay around Positano.  He said only that Italy was a long way to go.  But he went with me.  I held his hands closer to my heart and struggled to find more words.  Just then, the boys came into the room.  Our trip to Italy was over.  

They hugged him.  My youngest son fed him a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake and my oldest son massaged his feet.  We listened to the broken, nonsensical stories he tried to tell us, bits and pieces making sense while the rest forever lost.  We helped make him comfortable.  We promised to come back in a day or two and reminded him that his other two sons were coming to visit the next day.  

The boys left me alone with him again and went to get the car.  I kissed him on his cheek.  I kissed each of his hands.  I kissed his lips.  Tears streaming down my face now.  I told him I loved him.  I told him I would always love him.  He said the word “love” and kissed my hands in his.  I left.  Half walking, half running back down the same halls I’d trespassed earlier.  Crying harder now.  Sobbing.  Staff asking me questions.  Asking if I needed anything.  If they could help me.  I didn’t answer.  They couldn’t help. I left. 

A huge part of my grief is for my sons — seeing them in such anguish, fear, bewilderment, sadness and anger at the cancer.  Being father-less at a young age.  Left with complex feelings about their dad and what he meant to them.  Left to pick up his pieces as he didn’t plan for his death.  Not all that surprising, but disappointing and tough on them.

Part of my grief is the realization that I am truly alone now — alone as a woman and as a parent.  He is gone and so is my boyfriend of the last 20 years who left me November 2021 out of the blue on a phone call.  He’d obviously become a part of our family and a stepfather to my sons.  So, they lost 2 fathers, and I lost the 2 men I’d devoted myself to for the past four decades.  Four decades. Not wasted, but failures of sorts.

Part of my grief stems from the sad reality that he and I only had the last nine months as true friends and co-parents.  Our divorce was not amicable.  Our co-parenting was sub-par, to say the least.  We had such a short time to behave as mature adults and co-parents.  Even though we talked almost every night during this last period, we didn’t know during most of it that there was any urgency.  We behaved as if time was endless.  Isn’t that how we all behave?  And yet it is never endless.  Not for any of us.

The other day, I came across the photos I took of the flowers sent to me.  They still remind me that there is beauty in the world.  Somewhere. Everywhere.  We must keep our senses open at all times.  We must expect to find beauty in our world.  We must be ready for it even if we can’t see it, hear it, taste it, touch it or smell it.  We must never, ever shy away from love.  We must never fear love. We must never, ever give up on it just because it hurts like hell when love leaves us.  Grief is the price we pay for love.  🌼🌺