My doctor hurries. I persist. Grief emboldens me. I cling to my agenda. Pointing to my forehead I ask,”What is this?”

A scabby, bumpy thing popped out of my forehead sometime during the months before Tony died. The months in which I kept wondering if after the death of our dog, the death of Ricky’s dear friend, and the ongoing downward spiral of Ricky’s health what could be next. No time or energy during those trembling months for attending to myself.

The growth lives right in my very Swedish receding triangular hairline. The same hairline some of my first and second cousins have both male and female. Some families get identical tattoos. We just use our hairline to mark us as clan.

I pick at it in the beginning of this pain, in my ongoing angst. Sometimes ripping it off in anger only for it to grow back. Mocking me with its presence. Now at ten months into keeping grief my thinking clears enough helping me plan ahead once again and think about my own health.

“Looks like a basal cell,” she replies.

“What’s a basal cell?”

“Skin cancer,” she says as if this is a non-issue, “We’ll get you a referral.”

Shit. The last thing I need is skin cancer. But I look like the token poster child for the disease not interested in excessive use of sun block and hats until about two years ago. Skin cancer and osteoporosis popular among we fair-eyed, northern European types. So I suppose it is to be expected. Then given the stress inherent in grief, my cells are doing who knows what. Still skin cancer belongs on the list of things I do not want and cannot imagine adding to my long roll of issues to cope with.

Once home I call every dermatologist in town. Pleading. Begging. Pushing. I’m waitlisted everywhere. Still I persist, grief making me more adamant especially when my health may be compromised. Magically while trying to find an appointment at the University’s clinic, a space opens on the scheduler’s screen. “Oh!” she says, “I have an appointment now available tomorrow at 9:00 with Dr. So and So.”

“I’ll take it!” I scream. Relief floods my cells. Maybe even the ones in question.

The next morning I take off warning my younger son he may be late for school but then again what else is new? University rush hour swirls around my journey. An accident slows traffic even more. I’m running late. Parking in the wrong parking garage, I face what seems like a mile walk to the dermatology clinic through a labyrinth of walkways. The clinic moved since last time I was here with Ricky’s awful eczema which was in truth Lyme’s Disease but that’s really a whole other story and his to tell about.

I finally check in finding a chair to slump in only to realize I left my cell phone in the car many walkways and floors away. Neither son can get a hold of me. And I don’t believe I’ve been away from my cell (just in case!) for more than a few minutes since Tony died. Except for the time in the first fall of our grief when I lost my already battered phone, freaked out, and then found it beneath our mailbox.

My heart begins pounding with worry. For what brought me to this appointment in the first place. For what could happen if I am not just a phone call away. For what happened to us in August of 2016 creating my hyped vigilance in caring, in making sure all is well, in overseeing our grief.

Later after staring at the white walls of the exam room, waiting for eons, fighting mounting anxiety with deep measured breaths and therapeutic self-talk, the doctor arrives. He looks at my growth with a large magnifying glass breathing and making non-verbal communicative sounds under his breath. Finally he says, “I don’t think it’s cancer. I think it’s…(something I now don’t remember and probably could not pronounce.) I can freeze it off or I can cut it off and biopsy it.”

‘Biopsy it! I’m it,” I reply, “I am truly a single parent. Take it off. Biopsy it.”

I also tell him he mustn’t scar me which in the middle of all this angst reveals I am still concerned about topical issues. After I week or so I find he hasn’t to my relief. My skin smooth and clear.  New bits of hair filling in my receding triangle leaving me to wonder if I lost more hair during the shock of Tony’s death than I first imagined.

After a few more days the doctor calls with my results. His typical doctor call etiquette remains non-committal. I hold my breath at the stop light along the river’s construction zone. Finally he says, “It’s a wart.”

“A wart,” my voice pitch mounts as visions of those Scandinavian warty trolls roll across my mind’s eye. “You mean I could have just used Compound W?”

“Well if it grows back you can try an over-the-counter medicine,” he replies.

Another week passes. I laugh at the entire situation until the bill arrives. My procedure not fully covered because of our medical insurance deductible. My wart removal’s initial cost is one thousand dollars!  Obviously I am not emotionally healed yet. The old me would have researched the growth. Maybe even experimented with wart removal first before seeing a doctor. But I am still highly reactive. Measured thought remains a dream away.

More time goes by. The wart does not return. Another bill arrives. The cost of wart removal sinks by two hundred dollars or so. A small gift I think.

However in the same swirl of taking care of myself leading to the wart’s removal, I schedule a bone density test for August. In this week between what would have been our twenty-second wedding anniversary and the first anniversary of Tony’s death, I am upgraded from osteopenia to osteoporosis in my wrist and hip. My doctor puts me on medication to strengthen my bones. The ravages of my grief finally rearing an ugly head now at twelve months. Grief taking hold somewhere in my body playing on an already weakened area. Physical and emotional health responding to one another. Playing off each other. One a pinch. The other an ouch. Not so separate as we all tend to think.

Still I’m thankful for good care in all realms of our life this past year. Good care leading to emotional healing, trauma relief, medical diagnosis, and solid treatment plans. All helping us repair, rebuild and live despite it all.

And for me, well with good care there is this added benefit, a “bonus feature” as Tony used to say. One I hadn’t thought of until recently when I almost stumbled into the face of it while rediscovering with my sons the living world outside our grief. One brought home to me by warts and weak bones. A possibility which because I receive good care remains in the realm of my anxious imagination. A thought which when entertained out loud would have made my late and dear husband laugh.

The avoidance of becoming an ancient, warty, humped over troll.

 

 

 

 

 

Saint Anthony of Padua is for Roman Catholic Christians the patron saint of lost or stolen things. I wonder today while walking, spying the blooming orange day lilies in the ravine’s ditch, touching the bulbous flowers of the milk weed plant,  if this Saint can help me find myself again now amidst the many layers of my muck. Or if my own saint Anthony can from where ever he now resides.

Tony heard for years about the Lutheran Christian belief of saints and sinners. That we are both held in opposition, a paradox catapulting between one to the other minute by minute in our daily lives. One loving act quickly followed by shaming words. One promise kept while another not. Our humanness embraced and forgiven by an understanding, compassionate, and loving God without one request from us. Grace we call this incomprehensible mysteriousness.

But at almost eleven months I still feel lost. Not like at first when I could barely move or think. But lost yet. Steeling myself each day for come what may. Still making phone call after phone call tying up Tony’s affairs. Still supporting both boys through tragic grief compounded by medical issues compounded by feelings of unsuccessfulness as school for both of them this past year tenuous, arduous, hazy. Still weeping at odd moments.

I think somewhere in Tony’s things lies a St. Anthony medal. I wonder if I should pull it out. Even though I don’t believe in Saintly elevation. Rather preferring taking my worries and dreams right to the Trinity. But over the years understanding why many want and cling to faith mediators. Thinking maybe at the end of the day it does not really matter where we fall in embracing Saints or saints.Wondering too if Tony’s medal has the symbolic capability of showing me I will find myself again.

A friend reminds me of Erik Erikson’s famous and lovely and ringing true Eight Stages. Death flings me back into the adolescent stage of identity versus role confusion.  I struggle again and with great emotion figuring out who I am alone. No longer attached on every living level possible to another person except in memory and in two tall, young almost men sleeping soundly right now. Moving differently in grief, my body betraying my state. One not associated with a partner. Alone. Misplaced. Confused.

Stay focused I tell myself since grief makes me more aware of others’ attention issues and my own ability to get side tracked. Remember your strength my braceleted wrist reminds me. Remain curious Tony in my memory reiterates. All that glitters is not gold I say to the boys. And in a remembered haze from the early days of this hell I think a pastor friend told me to keep my eyes on the cross and not in a sin salvation kind of a way. But in a there is life after death both for the living and the deceased kind of a way. Or the salvation of the cross frees me from my living bondages, grief able to overtake me. Own me without something bigger to focus on, believe in. Or maybe that’s just what I want to think he meant.

Slowly and on better days than this one, I find I still love a good dress, sharing a finely prepared meal, the obtuse humor of friends and family, chocolate colored dogs, my extended family strewn across the world, dark chocolate for breakfast, my boys even when they are goofing off or leaving trails of stinky socks around the house, the fragrance of laundry hung on the line, pulling onions out of my garden with a pop(!), the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the seasons in our little corner of Iowa, Minnesotan Scandinavian idiosyncrasies, Spirit-filled worship services, the close knit chords of hymnody, meeting a friend for lunch, and a whole host of other joys embraced before and now after.

Somewhere in this mix of loves and grief is me. Not so lost as I sometimes think. A saint in my own right, Lutheran Christian style. Forgiving my own sins of omission and otherwise during this time of keeping grief. Focusing on healing trauma, walking with and through sudden loss, noticing my emotions whether they be feelings of abandonment, guilt, loss, or being untethered. At the same time entering fully into an unfolding future looking hope straight in the face. Living on with joy flowing from sorrow in another of life’s many paradoxes.

 

Every week a widowed or divorced, middle-aged man with a car, boat, or home who is always caucasian asks to befriend me on social media. These men have names like David Smith, Mark David, and David Mark. Each request comes with an oddly empty profile page. These people have no family or friends. If they perchance have one or two friends the friends tend to be (for the lack of a better term) booby younger women in scant clothing. The men also have no work history, no history at all really. And their written English syntax reads like a foreign tongue.

My sons call these requests trolls referring to a common media term but also to our collective aversion to the small Norwegian warty, hairy, figurines populating the homes of our extended family. Grimy also falls from my sons’ lips often in general feeling like an apt term in this case. As the recipient of these requests I feel repulsion as if over the cyber airwaves someone wants to do me harm.

I block these requests. Laugh about them. Make fun of them. Rail at this annexed injustice added to my many layers of pain. And now openly write about them for any one willing to read my blog. Poking at a world that sees widows as easy prey in our emotional pain. Limping along like an easy shot. The shooter tasting dinner on the trigger.

But I am not a target. So whoever you are get a proper job and an actual life. Volunteer your time to a real and worthy cause. You who haunt me obviously have time on your hands. And while you’re at it find a good therapist. Delve into your early childhood attachment issues. Have the courage to work on yourself instead of hurting others. Understand where you start and stop and others start and stop as well. Discover the space between your emotional boundaries and the emotional boundaries of others is where all healthy relationships in any form really live. Dream about goodness, the goodness you want to receive and return. Then create goodness in all its forms in the space between you and other people.

But if you continue haunting me I will keep calling you out in public. Giving you databases of trauma therapists around the world for you to contact. Urging you to make that first appointment. Wondering aloud about your substance and process use or abuse or addiction and how it’s impacting your life.

Because what you fail to understand in haunting me is that my late husband knew you better than you know yourself. And he and people like him are the key to your healing and happiness. Although now the world has one less of these healers and that is why you found me in the first place scouring your search engines for women using the title widow. Perpetuating the cycle of your pain. The pain you bat away. Hiding instead behind what your fingers can find on your computer. Your screen shielding you from healing.

Trolling instead of living.

 

If you get us all in a room, those of us who earned the unasked for title of widow, you might hear uncomplimentary commentary about non-widows or even of other more seasoned widows. Commentary born out of the ravages of early widowhood experienced when we were most vulnerable and most likely according to research to even die ourselves. Yet forced in our angst to ward off words, some more hurtful than healing hurled our way filling the bereft air with sound. Sound we could barely listen to but somehow made the speakers feel better.

Not for the attempts or the actual help usually wrapped in foil and smelling divine when hunger was non-existent. Even in the depths of our despair we recognized these gestures as acts of love. No, push back would be for the words uttered as we in recent widowhood stood shocked into fake smiles receiving stuff we would rather deflect or run away from while enduring phrases which really has no bearing on what happened to make us widows or what truly constituted support in our present moment of realness.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

God has a plan

Let’s start with this gem. Really? Did God sit upstairs in the control room of the world planning for an August river to act like an early June river? Did God plan for the state of Wisconsin, the county of Sauk to simply be unable to post a red and white danger sign like every other beach in the United States can? Did God plan for a beach full of people to be incapable of rescuing my husband Tony before he went under? Did God plan for the boys and I to witness the day of Tony’s death? I don’t think so, not the loving God walking with me then and now embracing and giving grace in the face of pain.

This too shall pass

Look, let’s just get something completely straight here. I didn’t lose my job or have a fight with my best friend. Okay I get grief changes over time and with tons of therapy. But it doesn’t pass away or die like my husband did. Loss stays more and more in the background as the months pass. But it’s still there. Visits me in the middle of the night or when I’m tired. Brings me to tears in public again and again especially in the aisles of big box stores. Reminds me daily that life is not nor will ever be the same.  Grief like life marches on but healing doesn’t happen without work–real emotional, gut wrenching work which takes courage every day to face everything anew while attempting some understanding of the confusion and feelings of being overwhelmed.

My aunt, an unexpected widow herself said to me a few months into this muck, “You will get stronger.” With these words she supported my bereavement as hard work. Not just a putting my time in watching the clock. Preparing to punch out of this horrid job called gut wrenching grief.

God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.

This statement belongs with the God as ultimate planner quip. It too connotes God hanging out in the control center of the universe deciding who can handle what. I doubt any child caught in a war zone reflects, if they survive, that they handled war well. Or a victim of sexual violence, male or female, thinks gratefully God thought they were strong enough to endure such suffering. This statement infers what happens in life is something to be managed or a challenge to be won. As if grief is something to be manipulated and not lived in and through as a possible part of human existence. God didn’t think “Jen can handle a complex and violent by nature death of her husband, Tony. She’s a tough cookie, she is,” as if God imparted a gift on my poor human soul. If grieving this death is a gift, I’m returning it for a full refund. No re-gifting from me either.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Okay. I’ve got to say most days I’m not concerned in the least about my braun. And the word “kill”? Well it is a grating, disgusting word to hear at any time but especially when grief is raw.  And even now nine months into this unwanted journey, I still utter internal commentary something akin to tired of being strong all the time. Once again this kind of grief does not stem from getting into a fender bender or being diagnosed with diabetes. It requires deep empathy and compassion on the part of the speaker. Not sympathy offered at arm’s length coded in a worn out utterance.

Still More Words…

There are more words uttered during this time which I can do without. Usually when asked a question I want to scream get back to me in a year! Like when people ask me how this grief experience will impact how I pastor. As if I can fully reflect on something so devastating while I’m still in it. Grievers and therapists know we grievers can’t…yet. And the reality of grief, sudden grief especially, is that the brain slows down. For me my spoken words come with a great deal of arduousness as if my brain is experiencing a blockage of some sort like coming across a highway made impassable by a rock slide. My reflective abilities marred in the mess. All I can think when I’m able to climb out of the rock slide for a moment or two long enough for a few gulps of oxygen is as a pastor I won’t use any of the word combinations I’m trashing here.

The other statement I hear ad nauseam attributed to Pastor Nadia Boltz-Weber is “share your scars not your wounds.” I told a friend the other day I will vomit the next time someone shares this phrase with me. I think when I’m feeling somewhat centered in my journey I would like to read her books or even meet her. I imagine we might laugh at the overuse of her phrase taken each time I’ve heard it out of context applying it to any of life’s traumas as if all trauma is the same when in fact the experts know each trauma like everything else in life is nuanced by the specific traumatic events, the past of the people involved, and the help received from the git go.

Remember…

Grief takes time. Lots of time and lots of tears and prayers and even some therapy, maybe even lots of therapy. But through everything and everyone who brings true solace, we who grieve understand gradually our own abilities and capabilities now. And in time and with work we are awed by what we have accomplished in our day to day lives while existing within the worst emotional circumstances. And the person we lost in this life, the one we grieve, that person is so very, very proud of us. And if we can hear our loved one or think we can in the quiet of night or early morning or even in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, we won’t hear any of the comments I’ve batted away here. I won’t. Not from Tony.

Instead I hear the words imprinted on a silver bracelet Tony once gave me. During a time when I doubted myself and this thing we mainline Christians refer to as call. Most days this bracelet lives on my left wrist right above my wedding ring. Nudging me forward. Speaking words I can hang my weary heart on.

 

Remember your strength