Dr. Linda Gillman is a psychologist, writer, and published researcher. She runs a weekly in-person cancer support group, leads memoir writing groups, and participates actively in an Older Adults Collaborative professional organization. In her private practice she uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and evidence-based techniques to guide individuals through the grief process and regain balance in their lives.
My life was forever transformed in March of 2007, when my husband of almost 30 years passed away. My journey was then immediately clouded by grief in ways that I had never expected despite the fact that I had several years to embody anticipatory grief.
My husband Bob retired in 1989 and we moved from the Atlanta area to a beautiful little town in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We bought a house at the end of a road. From our front porch all eyes were automatically drawn to the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their bluish-purple glow touching the sky and greeting the clouds in a timeless dance of majesty. Just a few miles away sat the campus of Western North Carolina University and as my ever-erudite husband often remarked ─ that’s where you could find visible signs of intelligence. We spent many evenings on campus attending musical performances and special speaker’s events. I found a great job as Executive Director of the Jackson County Family Resource Center and life was good.
Then in the early spring of 2000, my husband began having new health challenges in addition to diabetes and chronic hypertension. This is when we began several years of what might best be described as biweekly visits to our primary care physician who ultimately referred my husband to a cardiology practice in nearby Asheville, North Carolina.
As time passed, despite a plethora of medications having been prescribed, Bob began to suffer falls, chest pain, and increasing anxiety. In 2004 an angiogram indicated it was time for a pacemaker. Unfortunately, Bob never quite bounced back from that hospitalization. In 2005 I quit my job to care for Bob full-time as he was no longer safe at home alone. We both knew his prognosis was not good but of course, we tried our best to “normalize” each day as much as we could under the circumstances.
As I look back on it, I’m not sure how I managed to keep on keeping on as they say. My heart was heavy with a mixture of fear, anxiety, worry, and of course, grief with a capital G. As my dear sweet incredible husband became more and more infirm it was obvious that he was slipping away just a little every day. Sometimes I would walk deep into the nearby woods for a few precious moments where I could cry without him seeing me.
We now frequently spent our evenings with the soft glow of candlelight with Bob’s favorite music playing softly in the background. This practice brought forth the much-needed peace we both sought.
The winter of 2006 came in hard with deep snow and bitter cold. Now, I was the one building the fires and hauling the wood from the wood pile at the back of our property to a smaller stack of wood on our front porch. There were many days during that winter when the underground pipes from the well in the back of our property froze because the temperature never rose above zero ─ even during the daylight hours. When the pipes froze and we had no access to running water, I would scoop up snow from the yard and melt it in a metal bucket on the woodburning stove so I could flush the toilets. I felt like a pioneer woman instead of a city-girl living on a mountain but, to me, living there was a grand adventure.
Bob was in the hospital twice in January, and by early February he had become an in-home hospice patient. The hospice nurses taught me how to use a Hoyer Lift so I could transfer Bob from his bed to a chair just long enough to change the sheets. A near-constant stream of nurses, social workers, caregivers, and the hospice chaplain were now coming to our house. February slowly slipped into March and now there were beautiful little purple crocus flowers peeking out of the snow in our front flower bed. While the promise of spring grew each day with its hopeful demeaner, my heart felt under attack by grief as I watched my husband slip into his final unconsciousness.
March 7, 2007, followed a night of no sleep as Bob kept calling out to me. I ended up pulling up a chair to his bed so I could hold his hand throughout the night. It wasn’t quite dawn yet but I called the hospice nurse anyway to tell her about Bob’s restless night. The next thing I knew two hospice nurses were knocking at the front door. They came in and quickly checked Bob’s vitals and made sure he was as comfortable as possible but I noticed “knowing looks” pass between them. I knew─ I just knew that it was now down to hours.
Later that day as I sat down reading, I felt an inner urgency to get up and stand by Bob’s bed. Quickly I went to his bedside and while I could tell he was unconscious, I began talking to him, thanking him for all the wonderful years we had spent together, all that I learned from him, and for always being an example of loving kindness. While I was pouring my heart out to him, the vein in his neck began quivering and then he let out an almost inaudible “poof” of exhaled air and he was gone. I don’t remember how long I stood there wondering what to do next, still full of gratitude for all our years together, and yet knowing that the hard work of bringing grief into full bloom was manifest in the here and now and could no longer be avoided.
