As in earlier posts, I want to preface this discussion by saying that I understand people’s hearts are in the right place. But sometimes the impact of their words on my head and my heart is not what one would anticipate it to be.

In 1993, NBA star Charles Barkley was scolded in the media for proclaiming that he was no one’s role model. Specifically, when he was asked by a reporter to atone for certain behavior off the court, Barkley responded:

"I'm not paid to be a role model. I'm paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court."

He later went on to immortalize this phrase in ads for Nike.

At the time, I disagreed with Barkley, and felt that his response was an easy way in which to justify his lack of self-control.  As the mother of a one-year-old son, I was especially attuned to the debate, wondering as I did who he would eventually choose for his role models.

Fast-forward twenty years, and I have a new understanding of Barkley’s frustration. Unlike Charles, however, I don’t feel I can go around demanding that people not view me as a role model. I tend to back away from the discussions and keep the frustration to myself. It wasn’t until a meeting of my widow’s group that I realized I was not alone in my discomfort with such conversations. 

These accolades usually come after I talk with someone about what has happened in the three years since my husband passed away. Yes, I finished my Master’s degree—something I promised my husband I would do. I sold my house and moved myself and my two children into a new home. Also because I committed to Kevin that I would, and it was too difficult and costly to stay. I purchased a condo for the time when my daughter and son have left our nest and I am completely on my own. I have kept my job and kept my children in school and extra-curricular activities. We love each other, we get along most days, and we keep moving forward together.

For this, I have been called strong, brave, courageous, gutsy, and even told I have “pluck.” I am honored that people see me in this way, but I don’t feel it is accurate or even appropriate. I certainly don’t see myself in this way at all. I am simply doing what I have to do in order to get through the day. Outwardly, I smile and am mildly deferential when offered this sentiment. But inside, I’m bristling.

I did many time-consuming, sometimes-healing projects in the aftermath of Kevin’s illness and passing. In looking back, they were most certainly done in order to honor Kevin’s memory. But they were also done as a way to keep me so busy that I never had time to grieve. And the more exhausted I was at the end of the day, the more likely I was to sleep through the night. They weren’t acts of bravery or strength; they were, more accurately, acts of defense or denial of my situation. It was me doing what I had to do to get through this time. None were acts of heroism or virtue, but instead, were simple, yet very tiring, acts of self-preservation. They fed my need to keep up the sense of diligence developed from three years of life with a cancer patient, or, as the writer Emily Rapp has called it, the “addiction to dread,” that caregivers begin to live for.

Add to this the fact that the "public me" is quite often not like the "private me" who still has bouts of crying, of angry yelling at the universe, and even the occasional kick of the dog (who somehow still comes back to me and kisses my face), and you can hopefully see how difficult it is to accept accolades.

A dear friend recently asked me what has been the hardest thing I’ve dealt with in the past three years. After thinking for only a minute, I answered more honestly than I previously had, and said, “facing and being alone with my grief.”  That is the truth. And that is not a sign of strength. To me, it seems much more a sign of weakness. 

I have another friend who is widowed, whom I greatly admire. She too, has maintained a career, family and household despite the loss of her soul mate—so many of us do. At the time of his sudden passing, she spent several weeks in bed, not answering calls or going out. 

Some might say she was being weak, not getting on with it; hiding under the covers rather than facing her grief.

But I believe the opposite to be true. She is my hero. She did face her grief, in all its debilitating, suffocating, energy-zapping, daylight-robbing heaviness. She faced it and lived in its midst for long, frightening days and longer nights. She did not put it aside, telling herself that she would deal with it another day.

In the midst of the Charles Barkley ruckus, fellow NBA player Karl Malone said the following:
“We don't choose to be role models, we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one." 

I suppose this is true of the widow that gets herself up and moving forward each day, although I certainly wouldn’t call myself “chosen.” More like “left-behind.” I’m in a life that, God knows, I didn’t ask, nor ever plan to be in. And I would give anything to have my old life back. But it is still difficult for me to take the acts of simply moving forward and declare them to be acts of bravery by those who observe them. Especially since I know that many of those who have classified me as a strong role model would behave in exactly the same way, and do it equally well, were they to be in a similar situation.

We each deal with grief in our own way, and no one way is better or more correct than another. As grievers we each, in our own way, try to make the best of this new role into which we’ve been thrust, even on those days when we feel, more than anything else, that it simply isn’t worth it. Call it strength, adaptability, or simply getting on with it, it’s just what we do.