Swimming with Sharks

After experiencing the horrible event of my husband’s stroke, it put everything that happened afterwards into a much different perspective.  When John was in the ICU after suffering a massive brainstem hemorrhage, it was a constant bombardment of stress and chaos for me and my daughter.  In a single day, family and friends were asking questions that I didn’t have the answers to, a priest was indicating a miracle was quite possible to our daughter, Katie, our assigned social worker was telling then 16-year-old Katie that she had no right to be part of any family decision-making, and a doctor was telling me that my husband’s light was on, but there was nobody home.  I felt like a fish and the sharks were circling and eating chunks of me piece-by-piece.  My friends and family kept me from falling apart.  Throughout this upsetting time, I was extremely grateful to learn that I have solid and amazing people in my life. 

When you are widowed, there is your life before when the person was alive and an after.  My marriage defined my perception of myself in my ‘before’.  We were always John and Jen.  We went everywhere together.  We were rarely apart from one another.  Before his death, ordinary tasks like deciding where to go out to eat for dinner or what type of new silverware to purchase seemed important.  After his death, things like that seem insignificant.  Priorities have changed.  Everything has changed.  If you are new to the widow journey, by saying everything has changed, I am referring to your sleep schedule, eating habits, mental health, physical health, routines, energy level…just about everything.  When someone asks how you are doing it sometimes is impossible to answer because you are not doing well at all, but it is too terrible to explain to anyone who has not experienced this type of loss.    

In the early days and months of grief, I found myself constantly angry that John is no longer here with us.  I continually wondered how I would do the things he once did for us.  At that time, I simply could not think of a future without him in it, could not stop thinking that the ‘best days of my life’ were gone, and I could not stop wondering if my life would ever include happiness again.  Slowly I learned, and I still need to remind myself at times, that there is always hope. 

Our daughter is like him.  She has always embraced life with zest.  As a young child, she was fearless.  She would climb anything, the higher the better.  She loved any physical challenge.  When she was about 8 years old, I was visiting my sister in Pittsburgh and we went to a park with my daughter and her kids.  John always encouraged her adventuresome spirit.  Katie and her cousins were playing in the football field on a beautiful summer day.   My sister had stepped away to nurse her baby daughter and I went to find a restroom.  When I returned, I looked down into the football field and saw my daughter sitting on the goal post.  As a mother, I was startled for a moment gauging the height and distance and the danger to her if she fell.  I was also wondering why her father let her do that.  I walked down to the field and she had climbed down.  I asked her why she climbed the goal post.  She replied, “because I can.”

Anything is possible when you believe you can do something.  I am not recommending going out to climb a goal post.  However, it is possible to start shaping your future when you are a widow.  Still having an adventuresome spirit, my daughter wanted to go to the aquarium in Myrtle Beach, SC, to dive in the shark tank last summer.  In my life before, I would have laughed if she asked me to accompany her into a shark tank.  I would have had no idea it was even a thing to put on scuba gear and dive in an aquarium tank to observe marine life.  In my life after John’s death, I appreciate and embrace her curiosity and daringness now more than ever.  We went into the tank to dive with the sharks.  Why?  Because we could.  Swimming with sharks was a lot less scary than facing life without my special person, but I am learning ways to cope with facing the future without my beloved, John.