(Written August 11, 2011 but
not posted. At that time it was
considered too personal to be in a corporate blog.)
“Curmudge, it’s been eight months since the passing of Mrs.
Curmudgeon. How are you doing?”
“Everyone asks that, Jaded Julie, but the widows and
widowers already know the answer.
They can see the occasional vacant stare in my eyes because they’ve been
where I am. Some are still there.”
“So once again, how are you doing?”
“My standard answer is, ‘fine outside, but not fine
inside.’ What goes on outside is
called ‘mourning,’ and as you see, I’m not wearing sackcloth and ashes. The inside goings-on are called
grieving, and I’ve gone through several of its well-known stages. The survivor is typically in shock for
the first few weeks; that period covers the memorial service, and the start of
paperwork like paying the funeral home, sending death certificates to life
insurance companies, and collecting your $255 from Social Security. Then come several months of denial,
when you keep thinking, ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’ “
“During the ‘shock’ period in February was when I played the
part of your dying wife in our two postings, Way
to Go and Way to Go
2. That was a tough role,
but I considered it an honor.
Hopefully our readers learned that there are some instances when a
partial code is desirable. Later,
in The Old
Men’s Table, you spoke for other widowers in declaring that thoughts of
your own demise had lost their sting.
Do you still feel that way?”
“Actually, I hadn’t thought much about it, but it’s probably
true. And now I’ve moved on to the
next phase of grieving, in which I have to learn to adapt to the reality of my
wife’s passing. This could go on
for several more months, or years, or forever. It’s not a matter of learning how to live by myself; I did that for seven years
when I worked in the Northwest.
The difficulty is learning to live with
myself. I simply have to adjust my
mind to her permanent absence. I
have problems doing things alone that we used to do together, like traveling or
going to the opera. In fact, I
find it depressing to even think
about doing them.”
“I understand that you have a close college friend—as old as
you are—who remarried within a year of his wife’s passing. That probably cured his grieving in a
hurry.”
“I wish him well, but that‘s not something that my brain—or
maybe even the rest of me—could handle.”
“Curmudge, we wouldn’t have talked this long without your
having at least the kernel of an idea of how you are going to extricate yourself
from this mess called grieving.
Now’s the time!”
“For me, the most important thing all along was to keep
busy. As you know, I returned to
my volunteer job two days after the memorial service. Perhaps now I should return to other activities that I used
to enjoy—like singing in the church choir—as if I had never left them.”
“Sounds good to me, Curmudge. But your biggest challenge will remain reprogramming your
mind to accommodate your life’s new reality. So how are you going to pull that off?”
“A few weeks ago I was congratulating a 90-year-old woman on
her independence and ability to drive her own car to church. She mentioned that she knew how I felt
about losing my wife, because she felt the same way about losing her husband of
60+ years who had also died recently.
She also said that she felt blessed by her long life, her independence,
and her long and happy marriage.”
“I’ve got it Curmudge!
She was counting her blessings, not her losses. I’ll bet she looks back on her many
years of marriage as joys and not as things to be mourned. You should do that too. See…one does gain wisdom with
aging. Perhaps you’ll acquire some
by the time you reach 90.”
“As usual, Jaded Julie, yours is a good idea. I’ll give it a try.”
Kaizen Curmudgeon
Link to posting from blog archives: Patient Safety—Infections 1/29/09
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