Preface

 

This isn’t the book I intended to write. During my 30 years as a college professor, a slice of my academic life was devoted to writing journal articles—mostly for the benefit of my colleagues—on my research, interesting case studies, or innovative programs I developed. Because I enjoyed writing during my academic career, I thought I’d continue after retirement. However, I had yet to take the first step since leaving work. And then, suddenly, my husband of almost 30 years passed away. One day he was moving, breathing, laughing, and saying goodnight to me. The next morning, he was gone—my loving, funny Jeff. 

 

I was devastated; our world shattered as quickly as midnight lightning silently strikes a steadfast but vulnerable oak, felling it to the forest floor. I started making notes within a month of Jeff’s passing—thoughts important to remember as I tried to make sense of this tragic event and navigate through it. I’d never done anything like that before, but I was at such a loss, unsure how to move forward. If a thought struck an emotional chord, it was worth noting. Perhaps it would buoy my resolve and give me the strength to surface from my grief and breathe again.  

 

Beyond the sheer emotional impact of my husband’s death, the change in everyday life after losing a loved one—particularly when it’s sudden—is stunning. The first 18 months after your loved one dies are unimaginably hard. Early on, the visceral emotionality of grief leaves one in pure survival mode. Experiences are now filtered through a different lens, and the texture of time is altered. Feelings of loss and grief don’t simply disappear after a year and a half, but unexpected emotions that catch you off guard tend to lessen over time. I’m still on a learning curve, but I experience fewer thunderbolts to the chest knocking me off my feet. 

​

During those first 18 months after Jeff’s death, I began to mindfully examine the smaller moments of my life and what I was experiencing. What resulted was a profoundly emotional and revealing journey in which larger lessons emerged. What I’ve written in the following pages is my truth, the way I sought to make meaning of my grief. Some of these reflections may resonate with you.  

 

There’s an inherent paradox in trying to describe the lived experience of grief. One’s encounter with grief feels so unique and profound—how could anyone else possibly comprehend the depth and breadth of losing your precious love? Yet, an unrestrained and focused examination of this lived experience can be raw and revelatory, exposing the ferocity of life to which we bore witness. 

  

In his book, The Lived Experience, van Manen wrote that a focused introspection encourages us to be attentive and aware of the details and seemingly trivial aspects of our daily lives. “It makes us thoughtfully aware of the consequential in the inconsequential, the significance in the taken-for-granted.” This thoughtful awareness can foster a deeper understanding of the lived experience of grief. When the stories of our loss are told with honest reflection, they become compelling—they help us uncover the meaning of our experiences in the world. Revealing personal insights and truths is a door for others to walk through, allowing them to see their experiences as shared and connected with someone else. Reading a deft description of an experience you believed was yours alone may bring comfort, knowing someone else truly “gets it.” What you, the reader, take from it is distinctive to you. But still, there’s no “get-out-of-grief free” card. As far as I can tell, you don’t walk away from grief but find a way to walk with it. 

 

Throughout our lives, as we grow up and grow old in a culturally complex society, we develop a range of ways to think about and perceive experiences. But that range is finite. While the pain of the loss of someone you love feels so deeply personal and indescribable, those who belong to this unsolicited club share more with other survivors than they first might realize. While you don’t want people, especially those you care about, to go through grief that feels so exquisitely hard to bear, they inevitably will if they have loved deeply.  

​

The first notes I wrote to myself were strictly my thoughts and feelings related to grieving and how I could cope with what had happened. But as I continued to write and give voice to my reflections, I began to write about love. You don’t write about profound grief without having profoundly loved, as the two travel hand-in-hand. C.S. Lewis, the British scholar and theologian, wrote in A Grief Observed, “If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation, then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.”  

​

Though this book is, first and foremost, a memoir, my understanding of the grief process is filtered through my personal and academic identities—they are inextricably intertwined. In the following pages, I share many stories, about my husband, myself, and our relationship, interwoven with knowledge, research, humor, and wisdom to create a broader context for understanding bereavement in the first 18 months. 

 

This book* contains seven themed sections, each featuring stories that explore how these themes take shape. It follows a loose chronology, as there is no orderly narrative arc to the experience of profound grief. It doesn't follow a neat, linear path—where you finish one stage and move on to the next. Several chapters in the book have their own chronology, as one’s perceptions change over 18 months. For example, in the chapter “A Visit from Guilt,” my experience of guilt shifted over time, and it was important to say how that happened. There’s a saying that form follows function. In this case, form follows experience. Grief is a collection of wavy, dotted lines, crossing over and intersecting with one another. One day, you’re functioning well; the next, you’re a puddle of tears. If your experience of loving someone had all the highs and lows of what life puts in front of you, why wouldn’t grief feel the same? Both grief and love are messy and surprising.   

 

For any reader who has loved someone deeply and lost that person, there is something here for you. I urge you to tell your own stories of love and loss, to articulate them so you can hear yourself think. Everyone’s journey is different, and the meaning you discover is uniquely yours. Finding meaning is how you move forward, allowing you to make some peace with the immutable.