It’s never too late to honour your person
On the anniversary of A’s passing, I found myself sitting on a blanket facing the beautiful white cross that marks the sacred ground that now holds his body. He is buried on a mountain, in a quiet and peaceful space surrounded by tall trees about an hour away from the city I live in.
On that morning, the sun was warm and the leaves were swaying softly in the wind around me and I felt profoundly grateful for the physical proximity I felt to A’s earthly body.
Over the last 18 months, I have been reflecting on how challenging honouring our loved ones and our own grieving hearts has been in the midst of this pandemic.
I was lucky to be able to access A’s grave on that summer morning. If the anniversary of his passing had been in the fall, winter or spring, lockdowns or travel restrictions in between regions might have prevented me from being able to go and engage in my own little ritual.
For many grievers, there is a new reality surrounding grief during a pandemic.
I’ve heard countless stories of loss where mourning together now means connecting on the screens of our phones or computers, where loved ones die and one is simply not able to physically get to the funeral, that is when a funeral is even held.
For many, coming together to mourn and enacting the grief rituals common to funerals and memorials marks the beginning of the grieving process. Not being able to gather to pay tribute to someone we love that has died is adding grief on top of grief and is profoundly unnatural for us, relational beings.
This pandemic is forcing us to rethink how we grieve. Although much can feel out of our control, the message I want you to take from these words today is that there ARE things that you can do to honour your loved one no matter what the restrictions look like where you are.
First, it is never too late to honour a loved one through a funeral or memorial service. In the context of the pandemic, this might have to be delayed but no matter how much time has passed since your loved one’s passing, planning a service is a meaningful way to celebrate your person’s life with those who love and mourn them too. For more information on planning a service during the pandemic, Remembering A Life is an amazing resource.
Even when a funeral or memorial cannot be held at the time of your loved one’s passing, there are other beautiful ways that you can remember a loved one, honour their life and legacy with others, or on your own.
When the pandemic began and I could not physically travel to A’s gravesite, I had to find other ways to ritualize my grief. I have always loved to write and when I met A, we spent long hours writing to one another. It was through his writing that I got to know both his brilliant mind and enormously kind heart. We would write short witty notes to make one another laugh during our work day and long elaborate letters where we would contemplate the depth of the love and devotion we both felt. We never stopped writing even as A was slowly dying, he continued to write to me in a notebook that now feels like a sacred gift.
After he died, and especially once the pandemic started, I began writing to him again. I write with the purpose of safekeeping the memories that only I am the keeper of in his absence. I write the memories I never want to forget, the memories with A that have shaped the woman I am today. And in a memory jar, I write the words he used to say to me about the qualities he saw in me before I ever saw them in myself. I write his words of encouragement, the words he used to express his love and the words he used to say to express his certainty that no matter what, I would be OK.
When I need a reminder, all I have to do is pick one of his little notes and remember to see myself through his eyes.
This is one of my grief rituals. It helps me honour both A and myself.
There are countless ways to remember a life.
If you need inspiration, Remembering A Life is a tremendous resource that offers advice and guidance to help families understand the way funeral options have changed and to help them navigate their grief during these challenging times.
On their website, you can find a list of 30 meaningful ways to remember your person’s life. Even if the pandemic has prevented you from attending the funeral and maybe especially if the pandemic has robbed you of this opportunity for mourning, these can assist you in the grieving process. Some of these activities you can do on your own. Like me, you can write to your person, start a memory jar or even tell the story of their life in whatever artistic way feels meaningful to you. There are also rituals and activities that you can do with friends, family or children like cooking their favourite meal or hosting a candlelight vigil.
It is never too late to honour your person and your grieving heart. We may have to get creative and find ways to create our own rituals but there can be so much healing in finding ways to remember our loved ones and to weave those little moments of remembrance into our daily life.
Legacy projects help children preserve special memories
I’m Marie, a Grief Coach and End-of-life Doula who walks the path of healing with women who have suffered a profound loss. I specialize in creating safe spaces for women to be seen, heard and witnessed in the fullness of their experience of loss.
I am the founder of Empowered Through Grief, a coaching practice and community that provides a brave space for healing and post-traumatic growth for women grieving all types of loss. I never thought that life would lead me here, but my partner’s terminal cancer diagnosis four years ago has opened up an entire new path for me and radically changed my perspective on life and death.
When cancer became a part of our lives, I didn’t attempt to shield or protect my little boy from the realities of what we were living through. Although I wasn’t very educated about grief as we were facing a profound loss together, my intuition guided me to include him in ways that were appropriate for his age at the time. And so, we faced cancer together, all three of us. And then my son and I faced grief together.
It can be tempting to hide illness and death from children and to prevent them from attending funerals out of fear that it might be too much, too painful, too dark or too grown up for them. Of course, we all have to make the decisions that are right for our own family and for our little ones. But knowing that there can be something very healing about giving children a sense of power and agency at a time when much can feel out of their control is a helpful piece of information that can help guide us through this painful time.
Engaging my son during A’s, my partner’s, illness has been important but doing so after his passing has been truly so meaningful to me. As part of the grieving process, I’ve found it supportive and helpful for us to DO things together to remember, to honour and to help us feel connected to A.
In my personal life and as a part of my work, I will often talk about and help create legacy projects. These are creative projects that we can do with children both to cultivate a sense of agency for them inside of their experience of grief AND, to preserve some of their most precious memories.
A legacy project is a simple way to enter our children’s creative worlds and minds and give them an outlet to memorialize their person on the other side. Anything can become a legacy project, writing a book of memories together, creating a scrapbook of their favourite pictures or representing their memories and their love for their person through drawing and painting.
One of the most difficult parts of my grief has been accepting the fact that some memories will fade with time. The memories made in the earlier years of my son’s life are beginning to fade for him. Some of the moments he would recall and bring up on his own in the first two years of his grief, he no longer remembers. Over this last year, it has been more important than ever for me to help keep memories alive, for both of us.
We’ve been reminiscing and remembering together but what works best with little ones is to DO something. A big theme for us at the moment has been to remember that our family is made up of both the people who are here physically AND those we love that have died. Together, we have been making art, blending our names with those of our loved ones who have passed, honouring the sacred place they will always hold as part of our family.
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to keep your own memories alive after the passing of a loved one, you can head over to Remembering A Life’s website for a list of meaningful ideas. There are countless ways to memorialize a loved one so use that list as a launching pad to create your own memories. Here are some of my favourites:
Create a quilt that incorporates your loved one’s clothing (can be really comforting for little ones)
Sing or play their favourite songs (after A passed, we would exclusively listen to his Greek music in the car)
Journal memories of time spent together, or about experiences you are having now that you wish you could share with them
You can find more wonderful ideas that can help you carry your person’s legacy forward at Remembering A Life.
With love,
Marie
P.S. If you’re wondering if your child should attend the funeral of a loved one, Remembering A Life has great resources in the Youth and Funerals section of their website.
Conversations that matter.
During the last summer that A and I ever spent together, his final summer, we talked about everything.
There is a kind of wisdom that comes as you are forced to sit with death. When A and I invited death in and faced the truth and finality of it, all of the walls we ever built to protect ourselves against pain seemed to come down effortlessly.
In that space, he and I were able to share the deepest and most vulnerable moments we ever had. We talked about everything.
We talked about the future we had envisioned that would now never materialize.
We talked about all of our dreams for our life together. He told me about how he wanted me to go on after his death. He told me his hopes and dreams for me once he would no longer be here.
Every secret we ever kept from one another was now out in the open. There were no more walls, no more pretending to be different than exactly who we were in those moments, no more self-protection and no more white lies. We were two wounded scared humans no longer pretending to have it all together. There was such freedom in that and a sense of liberation. We were connected, heart to heart and soul to soul.
Having had so many of these deep conversations during his sleepless nights, I truly thought I knew all there was to know. And yet, after A passed, as I sat in the living room of the palliative care home where we had spent the last week of his life, his family asked me about his wishes for the funeral and I was stunned.
I had no idea what he wanted.
How did he want to be celebrated and remembered?
What kind of music did he want us to play?
What were his favourite memories of the people he loved?
I had no idea. Somehow, despite the fact that I felt we had talked about everything, I had missed so many opportunities to go even deeper.
And I truly had no idea about what he wanted after his death.
This has been a profound learning experience in my own life. I remember shortly after A’s funeral, sitting with my best friend and telling her my wishes for when my time would come.
She told me hers. We both felt this sense of urgency. This information needed a place to live. Someone should know these important details.
That’s why I love the Remembering A Life’s Have the Talk of a Lifetime Conversation Cards.
Sitting down with loved ones to talk about their lives is a rich and satisfying experience.
Learning about memorable events, people, places, values and lessons they have learned can
help bring you closer to the people you care about.
I believe that we should have these conversations before reaching the end of our lives.
Why do we wait before asking the important questions?
Why do we have to face death to have meaningful and deep moments with our loved ones?
Don’t put this off thinking that there will be time.
There is never enough time with those we love.
These cards offer an easy and fun way to start these conversations, even with the youngest members of your family, with different decks for different purposes:
50 questions that will get the conversation started about life events, experiences and personal beliefs. Also available in Spanish.
25 questions designed to include the youngest members of the family in the conversation. A great giveaway for children’s grief centers and camps, hospitals and schools!
25 questions that invite family and friends to share stories about family celebrations, from birthdays and anniversaries to faith-based and national holidays. A perfect giveaway during the holidays!
I’ve loved using them with my son and my parents. It’s enriched and deepened our connection to one another in a way that is truly special and meaningful. Never again will I put off having deep and vulnerable conversations with those I love the most. I now understand the importance of sharing those moments right now. There is no need to wait until you are facing death to have these talks. There is profound healing in getting to know our people deeper while they are still with us. Knowing that we shared meaningful moments with them helps soothe our grieving hearts when they are gone. Visit my Instagram page for the chance to win your own set of the cards.
Life is so short. Don’t put off having these conversations. You’ll be so grateful for these moments.
What true self-care in grief means to me
August 2020 marks three years since A died.
For the last two years, I would plan my whole month of August in great detail in order to reclaim a sense of control over my grief but this year, Covid-19 has made that difficult for me.
A cancelled trip to Greece left me with no plans for how to honour A on the third anniversary of his passing.
Instead of traveling and getting together with loved ones, I’ve decided to share some of the lessons that I have learned through loving and losing A. In death, just as he was in life, A remains one of my greatest teachers. These lessons have transcended his passing and continue to influence the way I choose to carry my life forward.
One of the most profound things that A has taught me is the importance of living a life that feels true and authentic to me. As a recovering people pleaser, listening to and honouring my own needs has always felt selfish and self-indulgent. I spent many years living in accordance to how people around me wanted me to live, giving my power away and living with resentment for having abandoned myself over and over again. All of that seemed to simply melt away under A’s unconditional love. His love revealed me and allowed me to unbecome all that I had learned to be. He taught me the importance of true self-care.
By self-care, I don’t mean girls night out and bubble baths.
The type of self-care I am referring to here is cultivating a loving and compassionate relationship to myself. Nowhere has that lesson been more important for me than in grief. Losing A has been my life’s greatest challenge and self-care has been how I’ve slowly taken my power back.
Grief over the loss of a loved one is a complex experience that has a ripple effect over our entire life and learning to take care of ourselves through it is a crucial part of the healing and rebuilding process.
For me, self-care has meant learning to have loving but strong boundaries with others in my life. Grief is a drain on our energy level and so learning to tune in to my needs, moment to moments and saying no to people and events that drain me further has been very supportive for me.
Self-care has meant reconnecting with my passion for writing and using that as a way to process the magnitude and complexity of my grief. A and I loved writing to one another and I have countless emails and notebooks filled with the details of our story. I’ve carried on this tradition in my own life using writing as a way to remember him and to normalize grief for other grievers on my platforms.
Self-care has also meant giving myself the time and space necessary to figure out how this loss has changed me, who I am now and how I want to put my life back together. For the last three years, I almost always begin my day with some alone time to connect to myself, check in with my emotions and sit with whatever is there with compassion and acceptance. This has helped me learn how to be with the difficult emotions of grief without feeling the need to fix myself, ignore or numb my feelings. This simple habit has helped learn a useful life skill that no one has ever taught me before, the ability to be nurturing towards myself rather than critical, judgmental or avoidant.
I know that the idea of making time for self-care can seem difficult and overwhelming when our lives are changing so quickly and our responsibilities don’t let up. But that is exactly when we need to take care of ourselves, especially during a global pandemic.
That’s why I’ve partnered with Remembering A Life and want to share these resources with you here. The National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) launched Remembering A Life (RAL) to help individuals and families beautifully memorialize a life well-lived. In addition to helpful information about planning a meaningful service, RAL offers other useful information, such as resources to help people understand their own and others’ grief and loss.
RAL is a tremendous resource that offers advice and guidance to help families understand the way funeral options have changed during the pandemic and to help them navigate their grief during these challenging times. They have wonderful resources like their Self-Care Box, with items carefully selected to help you find relaxation, reflect and remember.
They have graciously offered to give away two of their wonderful Self-Care Boxes filled with items that will help you connect meaningfully with yourself and remember your loved one.
I have already started using the grief journal to write down the lessons that A has taught me and to remember all of the ways in which his spirit continues to influence the course of my life.
I also love the essential oil roller. Putting a few drops on your wrist allows you to curate that feeling of calm and safety that is so often lacking for us in grief.
The box also contains a beautiful jar that my son and I have started filling up with funny memories of A. As soon as you open the box you can tell that it’s been designed with us, the griever, in mind. Every aspect of grief has been taken into account. The water bottle acts as a reminder to take care of our physical body and the beautiful dragonfly charm reminds us that even though our loved ones aren't here physically, they are never gone. When thinking about self-care, remember to care for your physical, emotional and spiritual needs.
Head over to my Instagram page to enter the giveaway!
instagram.com/empowered_through_grief
Self-care is truly how we begin to take our power back in grief. If you are still thinking that taking care of yourself is selfish, take this as your permission slip to begin to let that false belief go. Self-care is the most loving thing you can do, both for yourself, and for your loved ones who are still here. I’d love to know, what are some of the ways in which you are taking care of yourself in grief?
Sending you so much love,
Marie
The #1 reason you aren’t receiving signs from your loved one
Let me start by saying that I don’t believe that our loved ones are gone. Rather, I believe that they are still with us, their spirit as present as it was in life. Throughout my own journey through grief, I have experienced time and time again, the connecting power of the love that lives on despite the absence of the physical body.
I also believe that our loved ones are sending us signs all the time.
They want us to be aware of the fact that they haven’t left us. They want us to find comfort and strength in the knowing that we are still, and always will be, connected through the undying bond of love.
If you feel as though you haven’t received the signs and guidance from your loved one, here’s what I think is blocking you.
It’s up to us to learn to tune into this new way of communicating. The problem is that we live in a society of endless noise and distraction and we have never been taught how to dial the noise WAY down. The ability to get quiet is the first step in tuning into the signs and guidance from our loved ones and from the Universe.
Life is so very busy and grief comes with such overwhelming emotions that it’s easy to miss the signs entirely. Signs are subtle and if we are not paying attention, we might literally walk right by a billboard sized sign and miss it entirely (it’s happened to me!).
It’s so easy to miss the signs even when they are right there in front of us. So it’s not that we aren’t receiving signs, it’s that we aren’t slowing down enough to notice them.
Here are a few practices that have helped me tune in and receive signs:
Become present and mindful
Daily meditation is a great way to get quiet and tune into your own intuition. Signs can be as subtle as a sudden inner knowing that our loved one is near. We might feel a sign in our body before being consciously aware of it in our rational mind. Having a simple meditation practice can help you learn to quiet the mind and tune into your body’s infinite wisdom.
If, like me, you are not a great meditator, you can still get all of these benefits by engaging in active meditations. The goal here is to engage in an activity that promotes mind wander. I love to get outside with no distractions (that means no phone!) and simply walk. As I am walking, my mind wanders and that shuts down the part of the brain responsible for that incessant chatter. It helps me become mindful of what’s around me. As I walk, I pay attention to the world around me. I notice the trees, feel the wind and the sun on my skin, listen to the sounds of the cars and of the leaves blowing in the wind.
By slowing down and paying attention, we open our consciousness up to receive signs and guidance from our loved ones.
Just ask!
You might not know this yet but you can ask your loved one for signs. I do it all the time. When I need to make an important decision or when I am missing A and want reassurance that he is still around me, I will close my eyes, get really quiet and still and speak to him, almost like a prayer. I will ask him for a specific sign. Make it specific so that when you receive it, your rational mind can’t explain it away as a coincidence or a random event. The key once you have asked for your sign is to surrender and trust that you will receive it.
It really is that simple.
Through signs, we can find great comfort in knowing that our loved ones are ok and that they are still with us in their own way. Although it doesn’t replace their physical presence in our lives, it can help alleviate the heaviness of grief.
I send you love on your own journey through loss, xo MC
Why we need to get comfortable discussing grief in all of its manifestations
People often write to me and tell me that they appreciate how real and honest I am, on social media, about what it’s like living through loss.
I love hearing it but it’s also a reminder of how much work there is to be done in grief education.
When A died, no one told me that I wouldn’t sleep for 8 months.
No one told me that I would probably grieve him for the rest of my life.
No one told me that I could both, grieve over having lost him and also feel grateful and happy for my new life.
No one told me that my anxiety would reach peak intensity and that I would hold my breath in fear every time someone didn’t answer the phone.
No one told me that I would be scatter brained and wouldn’t be able to read a book for two years.
No one told me anything real about grief and loss. No one. Not even my therapist.
And so when it happened to me, I thought I was going MAD. I wondered if I was normal. If I was processing my grief the “right way”.
And that’s why I write about this stuff. So that you don’t feel crazy and know that what you’re going through is normal and healthy and that you’re going to be OK.
Letting go of who we used to be is also a part of grief
The last normal thing that A and I ever did was travel through Italy just before Christmas. The Italian Christmas markets will forever hold a special place in my heart. A was just about to receive his terminal diagnosis two weeks later, but at that moment, we were holding hands in the cobblestone roads of Rome and across tiny Venetian bridges unaware and unprepared. When I think back on that time in my life, I am shocked at how different of a person I was then.
I was lovely then, unencumbered by the realities of tragedy, illness and loss. I was naïve and even a little entitled. There was a lightness to my being and to the way I related with the world around me that has left me today.
And that’s ok. In many ways, I am a better version of myself now. Having been awakened to the impermanence of every relationship, situation and circumstance in this life. I find myself being much more grateful, with a newfound depth and wisdom of character.
I do miss the lightness though. The lightness that comes with not having to carry grief. The lightness of not even knowing what grief and loss feel like. There are so many little deaths in grief. Letting go of who we used to be is one of them.
With love,
MC
How to put a stop to anxious grief thoughts
I shared a coffee date with my good friend S on Friday. We got to catch up and share what's been going on in both of our lives. One of the reasons I love S so much is that she always listens to all of the ways my anxiety affects my life with no judgement and no quick fixes. She has true empathy and I feel seen and heard in her presence. S struggles with anxiety too and so she deeply gets it. On Friday, I shared what I learned so far in my current therapy journey. She texted this morning saying it helped calm her mind. I wanted to share with all of you in the hopes that it might help whoever needs to hear this on this Monday morning.
Therapy has been both amazingly helpful and useless at different times.
Let me explain. When A first passed away, I went to therapy to deal with my trauma. I am certain that many of you will relate to this. At first, I couldn't sleep. I would leave the lights on in my bedroom and the tv on for background noise until I would drift off in a nightmare-filled restless sleep. I kept dreaming of A but these weren't lovely visitation dreams, rather, they were dreams where I saw his body ravaged by the cancer. The images of him were so vivid in my mind that it was difficult to remember what he looked like when we had been well. Therapy helped because it provided a safe space for me to speak of the horrors I had witnessed. Things that couldn't be said anywhere else at the time.
After a while though, therapy dragged on and all I was encouraged to do was to use the 60 minute a week to talk about my pain and my grief. I felt as though it was leading nowhere. I wasn't learning the skills I needed in order to process my grief. I would feel relief in therapy but then would head home with the same old mindset and invasive thoughts that led me to seek out therapy in the first place. When I reached the point where I was sleeping again, I quit therapy.
I spent the next two years doing the kind of deep inner work required to find healing and empowerment through grief. I learned to let go of my victim stories in order to step into the role of creator in my own life. I learned how to take full responsibility for myself, my healing, my life from here on out and for my own happiness. I reconnected with my values, which had shifted dramatically post loss, and designed a new life in integrity with who I had become.
After all of that work, I still struggled with anxiety. So I figured I would try my hand at therapy once more.
As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. My therapist uses cognitive behavioural therapy to help reduce the space that anxiety takes in my life and it has been very healing and transformative. Here is what I shared with Sarah and what has helped me the most:
Cognitive defusion
Anxiety is a normal emotional response to perceived danger. It is an evolutionary necessity. Our brains are designed with a negativity bias. That means that we are hyper aware of danger (real or perceived). This was very helpful when we had to run away from saber-toothed tigers. In 2019 however, our brain's focus on the "bad stuff" can leave us feeling overwhelmed, anxious and depressed.
The brain will always point out the negative, the dangerous and the painful. It is its job to do so. Anxiety happens when we fuse with the fear-based thoughts that our brains are feeding us all day long. Contrary to what is taught in personal development, we have ZERO control over the thoughts we think. The brain produces over 60 000 thoughts every day and it is not true that you can decide which thought to have. Try not to think of a purple snowman right now. Don't think of a purple snowman. I know you're thinking of a purple snowman. And that is completely normal! Let go of this nonsense that you must control your thoughts.
What we must work on, however, is cognitive defusion. When a thought arises in our minds, we have two choices.
We can watch the thought, be aware of it and simply let it go. Think of the purple snowman for a minute. Did you go down a rabbit hole of imagining how a purple snowman came to be? Did you think of where you would have to buy food colouring in order to make it happen? And how much food colouring would be required? Most likely, you saw the purple snowman in your mind's eye and you let the thought go. You didn't FUSE with it to the point where you saw yourself in your backyard with your gallons of food colouring. There was no emotion associated with it either. You simply let the thought go.
That's cognitive defusion for you. It is the ability to create space between a thought and our emotional response to that thought.
The reason why I am so anxious is because I fuse with my scary thoughts. When my new love, D, rides off on his motorcycle, I can't breathe until I see him come home. While he's happily riding and enjoying the day, I'm down in this rabbit hole where I see him get hit by a car, I see the ambulance on the scene, imagine my reaction upon getting the call and picture what I am going to wear at his funeral.
When we allow ourselves to travel too far down the rabbit hole of anxiety, it is very difficult to bring ourselves back. That is why practicing cognitive defusion as soon as we have the very first anxious thought, helps nip anxiety in the bud.
In my program Empowered through grief, we do deep on how to practice cognitive defusion in the mindset module. I teach how to step out of a victim mentality and into the role of creator. If you'd like more info, feel free to email me directly or check out my website at: empoweredthroughgrief.com
I hope this was of value to you,
With love,
MC
"How you can support someone in grief"
This picture was taken on the day my son turned 3. That was exactly 27 days before A passed away.
On this day, a friend of mine put together a pool party in her backyard for my child.
Or for me, I should say. Along with her 3 children, they even baked a giant train-shaped cake for my little guy who was obsessed with them.
I remember being overwhelmed by gratitude at her act of pure love. In that moment, she knew what I needed more than I did. She knew that I needed an afternoon away from caregiving.
She knew that I needed a moment to be fully present with my son on his birthday. She knew that my son needed a giant train shaped cake that I wasn’t in the capacity to be able to bake for him. And she took it upon herself to create that whole experience for us.
For all of you asking how you can support your loved ones as they grieve, this is how you do it. It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as baking a cake for two days (it really was that big 😆) but the idea is to figure out one thing that needs to be done and then do it. Unprompted. Without being asked. Just do something.
What we hear as grieving people is: “if you need anything, please let me know”. And although that is truly kind, in the midst of acute grief, we don’t know what we need.
I didn’t know that I needed this party. And yet, it was EXACTLY what I needed. And two and a half years later, I’m still profoundly grateful.
Now go and love on your people,
xo
MC
“How grief has helped me live life out of the depths of who I truly am”
It all begins with an idea.
In December of 2016, I backpacked throughout Italy on my own for a few weeks. Having been to Italy before, I wanted to revisit a few places that I had loved and explore new ones. Hiking the five villages of Cinque Terre had always been on my bucket list and when “A” decided to join me, unexpectedly, for five days, I decided that that was what we would do. One evening, when I managed to fifth-wheel my way into a dinner with two American couples at the only restaurant opened in Positano on that particular off-season evening, they informed me that Cinque Terre was really quiet and dull this time of year. Wanting to make the most of A’s experience of Italy, I decided to shorten our time in Cinque Terre and add Venice to the itinerary even though I didn’t particularly long to revisit that city myself. I figured it was a sight for him to see once in a lifetime and then we would head to Cinque Terre for this hike that I had been looking forward to for what seemed like forever. After 24 hours in Venice, A was taken by the city in a way that I hadn’t quite expected and when the time came to leave, as we carried our suitcases across tiny bridges toward the train station, he looked at me and said: “let’s stay an extra day”. This was decidedly not the plan and my instinctive reaction was to resist his request but for some reason, in a way that was in complete opposition to my usual rigidity, I decided to live in the present moment and accept life as it was instead of how I wished for it to be. So we stayed in Venice and as I fully surrendered the plans and expectations I had placed on my time in Italy with A and replaced them with the ease of living in the present moment, we had a glorious time. I never got to hike all five villages in Cinque Terre although I did drag him for one small hike between Vernazza and Monterosso. One month later, A was diagnosed with inoperable and terminal pancreatic cancer. During the eight months between this diagnosis and his passing, he would often say: “No matter what happens, we will always have Venice”.
A and I found one another at a most inconvenient time in both of our lives. We were both juggling major life changes and falling in love was the last thing on either of our minds. When we met, I felt an instant pull. It was this magnetic connection that kept attracting me to him. Because it was inconvenient, I often attempted to place distance between us. He would have none of it. I always felt as though he saw right through me, past the face I put on for the world and right down to the very essence of my soul. Our love felt unavoidable and inescapable. Although neither of us felt ready for such a powerful force in our lives, there it was, this love that my friends used to call visceral. When A was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I felt a deep knowing that I was meant to walk with him on his journey between life and death. I have no words for the certainty that I felt about how caring for him was something that I was meant to do. Without a single moment of hesitation or doubt, I took a leave of absence from work and never left his side again until the day he left mine.
During this time, it became clear to me why our love had felt like such a force of nature and something neither of us could avoid even when we tried. I was meant to love him through the most painful time of his entire life. I was meant to embody love and hope for him against this backdrop of debilitating illness and imminent death.
This realization felt profound and provided me with the resilience to continue to push through the painful and soul crushing heartbreak of watching cancer eat away at the person I loved the most. It gave what I was going through meaning. What I was doing and embodying for A was important and deeply meaningful to me.
His illness seemed innocuous at first. I remember exactly when it began. He sat across from me at our favourite restaurant down the street and as he set his glass of wine down on the table, he placed his left hand on his upper abdomen and winced. I watched him get up and try to shake it off as he said: “I think I’m having some heartburn”.
As the days passed, this “heartburn” became more frequent. I thought nothing of it as A was someone who would stay in bed for three days straight when he was afflicted with a mild cold. I would give him Tylenol when his pain got too intense and would go about the business of life. Two months later, the business of life became more complicated as A had trouble sleeping, eating and working. He was on his way to having lost 20 pounds that he really didn’t need to lose when I sent him to the emergency room. There, he was diagnosed with an ulcer and given some medication. A few more weeks passed, A lost more weight and now he couldn’t sleep at night. I would hear him do push ups in the living room at 2am because physical activity was the only time he didn’t feel pain. When his pain became near constant, I went to the emergency room with him and insisted that we see a specialist. Looking back, we were so naive about how serious it all was. I remember A wrapping me up in his arms as we waited for the elevator after a test, I breathed him in as he joked: “As long as it isn’t my pancreas… otherwise I’m a goner”. We actually laughed then, having no space in either of our consciousness for the possibility of pancreatic cancer.
After a 16 hour day spent in the ER and 3 different tests, we were ushered into a small private room with this lovely young doctor who had the heartbreaking task of telling us that there was a large mass on A’s pancreas. I cried silent tears as A just sat there, surprisingly calm. He tried to get the doctor to say that it was cancer but she adamantly refused saying we had to do a biopsy. That’s the moment he knew he was going to die. He was always so in tuned with his own body and with the Universe, he just knew.
In the winter following his devastating diagnosis, we decided we were going to fight this thing with the hope that somehow, we would beat it. Perhaps, A would be a part of the lucky 9% of pancreatic cancer patients that are still alive 5 years following their diagnosis. We met with the surgeons and oncologists who, very kindly and regretfully, said that there was not much that they could do. The oncologist suggested one of the toughest types of chemotherapy that was meant to alleviate A’s suffering and potentially extend his life by a few weeks.
So we signed up for what would be a gruelling schedule of chemotherapy. A type of treatment that we began at the hospital and that followed us home in a bottle that was attached to his body and that lay between us in bed at night, a reminder that life had been permanently altered.
We flew to Germany to meet a doctor who was carrying on some experimental treatments with great results for his cancer patients. There, chemotherapy was pushed through an artery straight into the tumour. The hope was to shrink the mass enough to become eligible for a Whipple surgery. If you watch Grey’s Anatomy, you’ll know what a Whipple surgery is. As complex, debilitating and potentially dangerous as it is, it was what we aspired to get to.
By the time spring came around, cancer had begun its slow and terrifying transformation within my lover’s body. I started to see death all over him. There was shocking weight loss. This body that I once knew so well was now all bones and sharp edges. I could see his ribs through his t-shirt as he slept with his back to me. I could no longer touch any part of him except his hands and arms. Everything else hurt too much and hurt all the time. The nature of the hope we held had changed by then. We now hoped for more time. One more day. One more sunrise and one more sunset. The days where A felt well enough to get out of the house were few and far in between at this point. But on one such day, as the weather was warming up and the sun was shining on our faces, we walked down the street near our home and A stopped walking right in the middle of the street. I looked up at his gaunt but still deeply beautiful face as he closed his eyes and felt the heat of the sun’s rays on his skin. People walking by must have thought we were crazy but he was having a moment of transcendence and I didn’t know it yet but I would have a profound perspective shift that would help me through my grief after his death. When he opened his eyes, he wrapped me in his arms and said: “I am so grateful that I did not miss out on this day”. What he meant here was that he was deeply truly grateful for the sheer experience of being alive in this moment. In life and in death, A has taught me many lessons but none of them as powerful as this one. Despite everything that he had lost, his ability to work, to eat out with friends, to play hockey and eventually, even his ability to walk, A remained profoundly grateful to be “experiencing life” as he would so often say.
As terrified of death as he was, his fear was offset by the depth of his gratitude for the simple things. The sun warming our skin after a long winter, the sunrise through our big living room window, the sound of kids playing outside and the happy noise of family gathered around him as he lay on the couch, too tired to sit up from the war going on in his body. These moments he cherished and these moments kept him going when the pain seemed too difficult to bear. The hope of seeing one more morning was enough to make everything else worth it. That lesson stayed with me after his death when I found it hard to get out of bed in the morning. It served as powerful reminder of everything that I still had the privilege of experiencing. It didn’t happen right away, but eventually, I committed to living the hell out of this one life for the both of us.
By summer, the nature of the hope we held had changed yet again. We now hoped for a good death. A wanted to die as he had lived, on his own terms with dignity and grace. And I promised to give that to him. As difficult as caregiving was, it was truly an honour to walk with him through his transition from life to death. I don’t know that there exists a more meaningful act that we can perform for one another as humans.
Under clear blue skies on an August morning, I watched the funeral coach drive away with my lover’s body. In that moment, I feared that the strength I had felt while we faced the illness together would dissipate as I faced this grief alone.
Here, I had a choice. To fear, to avoid, to numb or to feel the full extent of this loss.
I’m not going to lie, I numbed at first. In many ways and for quite a while. Denial, distractions and numbing are coping mechanisms that we use, subconsciously, to avoid feeling the shock of loss which is an overwhelming blow to the psyche and body. Eventually though, I opened the door to my pain and invited it in. I would stare right at it, scrutinizing its many faces and manifestations in my life. As time passed and I settled deeper into my life in the “after”, I learned to tame its wild and erratic nature and rendered it somewhat domesticated or at least, manageable. By expanding my heart to make room for my pain, I’ve gained control over it. It no longer runs me. In my journey through grief, I have made a sacred vow to myself that I will not let pain and fear run my life. I am in control and I consciously and enthusiastically choose to the life that is still available to me.
And this, not despite my grief, but because of it.
As I slowly reach the three year mark since A’s death, my grief has been an opportunity to journey back to myself. In grief, I have learned to better love and care for myself which has helped me redefine my identity and gain clarity on what matters to me most in my life in the “after”. I now live a life that looks and feels like me.
Grief and loss alters us on a soul level. This can cause us to feel lost and untethered but if we use this time of transition as an opportunity to figure out what our values are and to design a life that is aligned with who we have become, I believe that grief can help wake us up to create a life that can be more meaningful and fulfilling than we could ever imagine. Since A’s death, I have built a community of women that hold each other up and dare to speak of matters of death, dying, grief and love. My passion now is to serve the grief community, to help women get their power back in grief and learn to redesign their lives with intention and to take responsibility for their own happiness. Through my online programs, I support women in viewing their pain as a sacred portal through which they can journey back to self in order to live a life that is fulfilling on a soul level. By redefining their identity, designing their lives in the after around who they have become and what brings them meaning and fulfillment, they become empowered to step out of a victim mentality and into empowerment through grief. Our pain is not a weakness. Rather, it can be a tool for deep personal transformation and for shining our light into the world. Grief can make us feel untethered OR it can serve as our new anchor and allow us to live out of the depths of who we truly are. This is the side of grief that I believe I was meant to share with the world.