Shadows and light

I feel like a shadow of who I used to be.  Dark, flat, varying in size and shape depending on how the sun is shining and when it is cloudy out, I disappear.  So much of my light has been taken from me.  I feel like you should be able to see through me, see the darkness, the sadness, and maybe you do.  Even if you can't see it, you know that it is there because my light is missing.  My light, my Brian, is gone.  He filled me with light, even on cloudy days. He promised me a long time ago that he would never leave me unless I could honestly tell him that I didn't love him anymore.  I never told him that because I never stopped loving him, but he is gone, and with him went most of my light.  I am left feeling like a shadow.  Dark, empty, only moving when necessary or forced. 

Sometimes what little light I have shines through and instead of being a shadow I am whole. I have color and depth.  I wish I could lose my shadow like Peter Pan and then fly off to Neverland.  Only in my case, Neverland looks like a white sandy beach with a beautiful blue sky reflecting on an ocean with rainbow colored fish.  My kids are playing in the ocean and I am laying peacefully in the sand reading a book and listening to the waves lap against the shore and my children laughing.  I would not be a shadow, my shadow would be next to me where it should be, laying quietly, waiting for me to move. 

Shadows and light.  You can not have one without the other.  Brian was my light and though he is gone, I still have his light in my heart.  It is not as radiant as the light from his smile, his laugh, or the touch of his hand, but it is there and always will be.  Brian's light left me with four stars, and those four stars light my way through the darkness of the shadows.  Without my four stars I would be lost.  As we move forward through the shadows those stars will become brighter and ignite in me a new light.  My new light will make me whole and give me color and depth.  I will no longer feel like a shadow.

Struggling as an "only" parent....

I miss Brian.  That goes without saying, but tonight, I REALLY miss him.  We ( I ) have these four great kids, but being an only parent is hard.  Brian for the most part was the disciplinarian in the house.  He was SO worried that he was going to die and leave me alone with four unruly, disrespectful, lazy kids that he was pretty hard on them.  When I say hard, I mean he was adamant about making them clean ALL the time.  It was not uncommon for them to be actively playing with something and he would tell them to put it away.  I'm not sure what he was thinking when he did that, and I would look at him and laugh and say, "Don't you see that they are playing nicely together?"  I did not agree with some of his parenting techniques, and I didn't hesitate to tell him that.  I also was worried about him dying, but my fear was that the kids would remember him as being this mean guy that always made them clean.  Because he was harder on them than I thought he should be I tended to take the lighter route.  I let them go outside and play with their friends without always picking up.  I put them to bed without first doing a quick clean up.  I picked up their dishes when they left them out.

Neither of our techniques worked and at this point it is backfiring on me.  Brian's fear is coming true.  Now that he is gone I can not get them to do much of anything, and I am frustrated.  I give in to them too easily, though I know why I do it.  There are two reasons, first, I feel bad for them.  They don't have a dad and they miss him, a lot.  Second, I am grieving and that in itself takes a TREMENDOUS amount of energy.  Quite frankly most of the time I am just too TIRED to deal with it and it is easier to let it go than it is to fight with them.  I just don't have the energy.  They all know this and they use it to their advantage........

Tonight was one of those nights that I said one thing and then gave in to them even though they didn't do as I asked.  It is a Sunday night and I told them I would make popcorn and we could watch Merlin, one of our favorite shows.  I told them that they had to be ready for bed BEFORE we started, meaning showers done and pjs on, by 7:00.  They were all watching t.v. and no one moved to start getting ready.  At the last minute they all scurried to get in the shower so we could watch our show.  By the time they were ready it was 7:30....I should have said "Sorry, you knew what had to be done and you didn't do it, we'll have to try again tomorrow night."  Did I say that?  No.  I wanted our Sunday night to have some family time, so I looked at all of the kids and said "When Merlin is over, do you promise to go straight to bed with no goofing around?"  "Yes mom", was the reply from all.  HA!  Gullible me.  No sooner did the show end and they were all saying they were hungry...ok, so get something to eat...Then they were fighting about who is sleeping where...Then the oldest child goes into the bathroom that has everyone's toothbrushes in it and locks the door.  It took an HOUR to get the three younger ones into bed, two hours to get the oldest into bed and I'm not even sure she's IN bed!  None of this would be happening if Brian were here, well except the brooding of the 12 year old, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be quite as crabby. 

I miss him.  This wasn't the way our life was supposed to be.  We brought four kids into the world together, we should have been allowed to raise them together.  I love them all and I wouldn't trade any one of them for anything (well....most of the time!) and they are my reason for living at this point.   I need to make changes, I know that.  I need to find the happy medium between Brian's hard parenting and my soft parenting.  I need to find a way to make them understand that I am serious, without getting to the point where I am screaming at them and then crying because I am so mad that Brian isn't here to help me with this.  It will happen.  It is just one of the many changes that we have to get used to.

As of right now, the kids are grounded from all electronics for two days for not going to bed as they promised.  If I catch them watching t.v. or playing on the computer or their D.S. another day gets added to the sentence.....I don't plan on giving in on this one, I hope it makes an impression on them!  Being an only parent is a struggle, and I hate it with a passion, but I wasn't given a choice.  It is one of the many things that I need to get used to on this winding path of widowhood.

The widow bubble

I have been in a bubble for months.  I feel like I am watching as all of my friends move on with their lives and the death of my husband no longer has the impact on them that it did.  The bubble keeps them from seeing the pain that I am in.  Sometimes I can break through and for brief moments I am truly happy, maybe even laughing some.  It doesn't take long though and I am back inside the bubble.  The bubble has carried me through the last 21 weeks without Brian.  The widow bubble has protected me.  It has allowed some of the sharp edges of reality to not sting so much.  It allows me a view of what is out there while keeping me safe. 

Some days though just aren't right.  My kids will talk to me and I look and them and say "Wait...What?"  They will repeat it and I still won't understand what they are trying to say.  Those are the days that the widow bubble is not clear, but foggy.  It clouds my perceptions.  I have found that on those days I should not even be driving, so I stay home.  Thankfully, the foggy bubble pertains to just certain moments and is not a constant, or even that often for that matter.

Sometimes the bubble makes me feel as though I am moving in slow motion.  I will have all kinds of goals set for my day and on many days not even one of those goals is completed.  I can't seem to get anything done.  It's days like these that I want out of the bubble, but that is scary too.  What if once the bubble is gone the pain of Brian's death is overwhelming?  It already hurts so much that I can't imagine it getting any worse.  While the bubble is there it has not hidden me from the reality of Brian's death.  It has not kept the pain or the tears away. 

The bubble is between me and life. Though I'm sure it is a necessity to have, sometimes I feel trapped.  I want more moments of true happiness.  I want to laugh again.  I want to be out of the bubble and feel like me again.  I want to live my life, though it is not the life I planned with Brian by my side.  As my life moves forward I suspect that the bubble will dissipate and one day I will realize that it is gone.  Until then, if you hear me say, "Wait....What?" you'll know the bubble is foggy that day and that maybe I need a hug.

The "W" word......

I am a widow.  I know, big surprise, my secret is out!  I was chatting online today with another widow.  A woman who lost her husband to pancreatic cancer as well, 10 months before we lost Brian.  In our conversation, the word "widow" came up.  She exclaimed that she HATES that word.  In fact, I have heard this statement from a number of widows.  I don't hate the word widow.  Don't get me wrong, I hate BEING a widow, but I don't hate the word widow. 

When you tell others that you are a widow, it is interesting to see their reaction.  Some people are uncomfortable and gloss over it as though I just said "It's raining outside".  Others get a tear in their eye and tell me how sorry they are.  Some ask how I am, and they truly want to know, they ask about the kids, they ask if we need anything.  Widow.  It is a strong word and it floods people with emotion. 

Widow is not a bad word.  To me the word widow tells others that I am not single by choice, but by circumstance.  We were married for 18 years, and though technically I am single, I certainly don't FEEL single.  I would never check the "single" box on a form.  That would feel as though I was erasing a part of Brian and a part of who I am.   The word widow lets others know that I was loved and that I loved.  The last night that Brian was awake I whispered in his ear "I love you"  he said "I know" I smiled and said "I know you do" then he whispered back "I love you".  It was the last thing that Brian ever said to me.   

I am a widow, I am not single by choice and I was loved by my husband.

Love and Loss

My love for Brian has not gone away just because he died.  In fact, there are days that it seems painfully stronger.  His death has made me remember the good times, and somehow the bad days have faded away and become an insignificant part of my life.  Of course, when you remember only the good, and not the bad, then all of a sudden it seems impossible to move forward with your life, because how in the world can you move forward without this perfect person beside you?  It is true, love doesn't die.  When there is true love involved, the loss of that love is overwhelming.  Not only have I endured the loss of  the love of my life, my best friend, and father of my children, there are "incidental" losses as well.  The loss of seeing and hearing him laugh, the loss of holding his hand, the loss of sweet kisses.  The loss of my freedom to come and go as I please.  The loss of life as I knew it.  Right now I am facing another "incidental" loss.  It is looming larger than life, and is not something that I can stop.  I have to sell the chiropractic practice that we worked so hard to build over the years.  I finally have a buyer, though due to the actions of my former associate, I am forced to sell it for significantly less than I was asking.  I thought it would be a relief to have it sold.  It isn't.  I am deeply saddened by this loss.  Saddened because I am losing of a huge part of not only who Brian was, but who I was as well.  

After Brian was diagnosed with his cancer we both went to a cancer psychologist at the hospital, sometimes together, sometimes individually.  At one point, I was very frustrated with the way life was going (at this point Brian had no evidence of disease) so I went to see him by myself.  I remember him saying to me that I had three roles in my life, wife and mother, caretaker and business partner.  He told me that that was two to many.  He said to me "You obviously aren't going to give up being a wife and mother, so you need to let Brian do some of his own appointment making and you need to stop being as involved in the practice as you are."  Of course, being who I am, I didn't quit doing anything I had been doing and trudged forward with a smile on my face.  Here I am, 5 years out from that conversation and I am forced to do exactly what he recommended.  I am no longer a caretaker, that loss happened when Brian died, and now, with selling the practice I will no longer have our business.  I am no longer a wife, I am just a mother of four great kids.

Selling the practice is like another death.  I feel like I am losing my home.  When the verbal agreement was made, I walked through the clinic from room to room and cried.  So much of who we were and the things we loved are painted into the walls there.  I loved working there.  I loved working with my husband (well, MOST of the time!) and getting to spend time with him that most couples never get the chance to do.  I loved taking our babies to work with us.  I loved telling people what a great Chiropractor Brian was.  Love makes loss so much more painful, and this hurts, it hurts a lot.

Now that I am almost down to one role, MOM, I have to figure out what to do with it and my time.  I am going to start by doing something that I have always wanted to do, but couldn't because I was too busy with Brian and the clinic - volunteer in my kids classrooms.  I now have the opportunity to be the mom that I always imagined I'd be and the mom that my kids deserve.  My kids love me.  I need to try to remember that the losses I have had can not take away the love that they give.  I need to soak up that love and let it fill me up in those times when I feel overwhelmed by the loss.  Even with the losses I have had, I believe as I wind my way through not only widowhood, but now unemployment, that I will find a path that will lead me somewhere beautiful.

 

Brian's song

One of our favorite things to do together since early in our marriage was to go camping in the Boundary Waters.  I remember the first time I went, I had never been camping before and was not so sure how this was going to work out since there were no bathrooms!  We went with Brian's mom, and two friends of ours from Palmer.  Our friends could not take a whole week off, and since I was so uncertain how I would like camping I had made plans to leave with them.  What a mistake that was!  It was an incredible trip and breathtakingly beautiful.  I cried when I had to leave, Brian was staying longer with his mom.  From that summer on, a trip to the Boundary Waters was a yearly thing, well, at least until we started having babies!

One year we went with our friends Jen and Paul, and that was an amazing trip.  Brian and I were running late (which was nothing new) and we drove all night to get to Ely.  After a false start (we got all the way to our entry point and realized that our friends didn't have their life jackets!) we got on the water.  We were canoeing deep into the Boundary Waters on this trip, almost to Canada, so we had picked a half way point to stop and camp for the night.  We were on a HUGE lake and it was windy, so by the time we got to our first stopping point we were exhausted.  We set up camp and ate, then laid down for naps.  While we slept a moose walked up to our tent, I remember the ground shaking and it huffing, talk about incredible!  The next day we packed up and canoed to our final destination.

I can not express how beautiful the Boundary Waters are, how peaceful. 

That trip is full of memories, and was always one of our favorites.  Paul caught a turtle on his fishing pole, and Jen and I laughed as we watched it pull Brian and Paul around.  At one point it finally surfaced, did you know turtles can gasp for air?  One day it rained and we were forced to spend the day under our tarp...with two former camp councilors! They had game after game to play...Grandma likes coffee, but she doesn't like tea!  Haha!  We took a day trip, canoed into Canada and went to two different waterfalls, Rebecca Falls and Curtain Falls.  On our way back Brian told me to stick close to him on the portage.  When we reached the end, I asked him what that was for, and he said "Didn't you see those bear prints in the dirt?  They weren't there when we went through the first time!"  Always my protector.  Jen and Paul left a couple of days before we did and the two of us enjoyed the quiet of just us






 Having 4 kids within 5 years put a damper on that kind of trip.  I am so thankful though that we were able to do a few trips with them to the Boundary Waters.







The first was just an overnight in 2007.  We were staying at a cabin outside of Ely with Brian's family and we took the kids to a lake that we had been to once before.  We both wished we had at least planned on staying two nights, but we weren't sure how the kids would do, they did great! 

In 2009 we went for a week. 

We were across from an island that was filled with wild blueberries, so we swam over and picked a bunch.  The next morning I made blueberry pancakes.  I didn't have a spatula, so Brian whittled one for me, it is still in our camping utensil box......

The third trip we took in 2010 and went on with Brian's mom. 

We never imagined that it would be our last.

Brian's mom has a friend who is a songwriter as well as a lover of the Boundary Waters.  He wrote this song for Brian:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXBEtRBByvg&feature=related

The first time I heard it was the day Brian died.  I laid my head on his arm and cried, knowing we would never again take our kids to the Boundary Waters together.  It is a beautiful song and has such meaning for Brian's life.  I am not sure how, and I'm not sure when, but at one point I will make it back to the Boundary Waters with our kids.  It is what Brian would want......
 

Betrayal

It is amazing how life can change in the blink of an eye.  Feb 27, 2006, the day Brian was diagnosed and we were given no hope for his survival.  The day in 2008 when he was re-diagnosed after having had no evidence of disease for 16 months.  A year ago when we were told that he had cancer in his brain.   September 3, 2011 the day he died.  Brian was a Chiropractor, and a really good one at that.  He had a natural talent for it.  He was committed both to his patients and the community in which he worked.  We worked hard through all of these life changes to keep the clinic that he so loved open and running.  In 2010, Brian was on some pretty heavy duty chemo and he was tired.  That was when we decided to hire an associate (Dr. C) to help out.  I never imagined that Brian would really never practice again, I don't think he did either at that point.

I was just dealt another life changing blow in late December.  In early November I offered to sell our practice to Dr. C.  Just before Christmas, she announced that she had decided not to purchase the practice AND that she was going to open her own practice down the street from it. What's that saying?  Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?  Why should she PAY for the practice when she was confident all of the patients would follow her to a new location?  She never signed our contract, so I don't have a "no compete" clause, which means there is nothing I can do to stop her.  She sent letters to our patients letting them know that she was leaving and where she was going.  She handed out her new business cards to patients she was seeing in my clinic while on my payroll.  She sabotaged the schedule by telling patients NOT to schedule their next appointment.  She is taking my front office person, who has worked for me for almost 4 years and on top of that has been calling her and telling her which patients from our clinic she scheduled that day.......At a time in my life where I was concentrating on taking care of me (the one person I completely neglected during Brian's illness) and my children, she was taking everything Brian and I had worked so hard to build and maintain.  I honored our agreement (though it was never in writing, remember she never signed the contract) to offer her first right of refusal on the practice.  While I waited for her reply, she was acting like a looter after a hurricane, taking everything she could.  It was a cold and calculated move. 

I'm sure she can somehow justify this move to herself and to the patients she is seeing.  I'd like to see her explain to my kids though how instead of doing the honorable thing she chose to take away the one thing that our family needs, a small amount of financial security.  You see, life insurance is one of those things that Brian and I always talked about but never did.  We talked about it with the birth of each child, and after baby number 4 we were getting quotes for it.  Brian was over weight so it was fairly expensive (though we were looking at the wrong kind) and he wanted to lose some weight before we bought it.  He had always been so healthy, so we never felt a sense of urgency, little did we know....So, selling the practice, while it was not the  amount of money we would have gotten had we had life insurance, it would have been enough to get me through until I figure out who I am and what I am going to do.

I listened to a voice mail on Brian's phone today.  It was our oldest daughter leaving a message for him.  She was telling him how Dr. C was taking his patients and how mom was so upset and was going to have to work harder than she already is.  I'm sure there was more, but I couldn't understand what she was saying through her tears and I am too heartbroken to listen to it again.

Who did Dr. C hurt with this move?  She hurt me and she hurt my kids, and she did it with a smile on her face.  I am strong though, or so I've been told, so I will survive this blow.  I will somehow find a path to wind my way out of this deep dark hole that I have been thrown into.  I have to, I have 4 kids that depend on me and I do not intend to let them down.  They have had enough pain in their young lives, and this was just one more blow that they did not deserve to receive.

My husband, my chiropractor

I remember the day that Brian decided to become a Chiropractor. I was a student at MATC and we were in the library together, I remember that it was sunny out. He was getting ready to sign up for his second semester of college after taking a semester off. As we talked about what it was he might want to do with his life, I asked him, what about being a Chiropractor? We had been to see his earlier that day and somehow it just popped into my head. We started researching more about it and before we left the library that day he had decided that that was what he wanted to do. At that point we had NO clue how HARD it would be for him to achieve that goal. Shortly after this day Brian was diagnosed with a leaning disability, which explained a lot to him. Because of his learning disability it took him 10 years to complete his education. 5 years of undergrad, some for remedial courses so that he had a better foundation for his learning, and then the rest for his pre-requisites for Chiropractic school. Chiropractic school was supposed to be 3 1/3 years, 10 trimesters, well, Brian was on the 5 year plan. With his learning disability he could not carry a full load and succeed, so he had to take a reduced schedule. The day he walked across that stage was the PROUDEST day of my life. He walked across not only once, but twice. The first time he received his B.S., the second his Doctorate. It was amazing. He was amazing!

After working with another Chiropractor for just over a year, which didn't work out because of financial reasons, we decided to buy a building and start fresh. That was September of 2000. He would ride his bmx bike through the neighborhoods and deliver flyers. He joined the Chamber of Commerce (and ended up being the president for two years just before he was diagnosed with cancer) and joined the Lion's club. He worked at community events. He became a part of the community, became vested in the community. He loved being a Chiropractor, his patients meant the world to him. When he was diagnosed with cancer, we talked briefly about selling the clinic. We had been given no hope for his survival, and the time we were given was short. We decided that selling was not what we wanted to do, it felt like we would be giving in to the cancer. It wasn't easy in the beginning, but we were able to maintain thanks to a number of Doctors that were willing to step in and help keep the clinic running while Brian did his treatments. I will be forever grateful to those incredible Doctors who gave of themselves to help us.

I recently found Brian's journal, and in it he talked about how seeing patients made him happy.  For all practical purposes he stopped seeing patients in June of 2010.  He did go in on occasion to see one or two, but he was tired from his treatments and on most days it was too much for him.  I know he missed it.  Neither one of us ever really considered the fact that he wouldn't work again.  We fought to keep the clinic open so that he would have something to go back to when he got better.  I continued to work at the clinic and he pulled the strings from home.  One thing Brian never was was a quitter, and this was no different.  This was just one more place where his determination shone through.

I hope that as we face changes at the clinic that I am able to make Brian proud.  I hope that one day I will be as proud of my accomplishments as I was of his.  I hope that I am able to keep the dreams that we had together for our clinic alive and make them into a reality.  Being in the clinic is hard for me.  He is everywhere I look. I just have to imagine him smiling at me and telling me what a good job I am doing.  I know that he believed in me and I believe that he still does.......now, I just need to believe in myself.