-Tomi Ungerer, author and illustrator of over 140 books for children and adults

I listened to this interview a few weeks back with author and illustrator Tomi Ungerer because I’d read his books and remembered his illustrations, especially those in collaborations with his lifelong friend, Maurice Sendak. I didn’t think I would find a portion of the interview so compelling and relevant that I would pull off the road and listen even more closely. 

As a child, I remember periods of being afraid of the dark, afraid to open the closet doors; the typical childhood fears, I suppose. But as I grew into adulthood, my fear shifted toward anxiety. This too is perhaps not so unusual. Grownups know what is real to be feared, and what isn’t. So we no longer fear that which we know doesn’t exist, but shift toward fearing what we can’t control. According to Ungerer, this is anxiety.

Ungerer is talking about his childhood during World War II, when he lived in the Alsace region of Germany. But he could be referring to other things as well. Our two-plus years spent trying to rid Kevin’s body of cancer was wartime for us, in most every sense. It came with its own “bombs and bullets and shrapnel.” It was a time of constant battle. Nearly every night, especially after Kevin’s Stage IV diagnosis on November 13, 2009, despite being completely exhausted both physically and mentally, I would lie in bed and think, “I cannot take time to sleep. There isn’t time to sleep. Every minute I am sleeping is a minute I am not saving my husband.” That was a time to be scared.

And yet, just as there was not time for sleep, there was also not time for reflection on the situation. We just continued to fight. And so I know a little about Ungerer’s fear caused by everything “going up in the air.”

But it’s his analysis of anxiety that stopped me in my tracks.

Tomi Ungerer's 1967 book Moon Man follows its lonely protagonist as he visits Earth for the very first time. c Tomi Ungerer

In the past two and a half years, I know that I have become a much more anxious person. Hearing Ungerer’s definition of this state was so right on, so close to my own recent feelings and experiences, it was as though someone understood my feelings for the very first time.

During Kevin’s first round of treatment, a dear friend who is a cancer survivor told us that it would take several years before Kevin felt confident of his health. Indeed this was true. Even after his first post-treatment, six-month appointment where he was declared cancer-free, he continued to be extremely watchful of every change in his body. When the cancer returned, giving him terrible headaches that didn’t respond to the usual Tylenol, he knew something was wrong, despite doctors who said that his type of cancer didn’t metastasize to the brain. 

Many people now, in offering condolences, or checking up on how I’m doing, make statements about how much I, more than most, understand that life is short, that every day counts. Yes, it’s true that I do. But there’s a double edge to that knowledge. Understanding that life is so unpredictable can motivate you to approach it with fervor, or it can paralyze you into taking no chances at all.

Since Kevin’s passing, I have had my own health issues. Usually they are nothing. Does this come from my own lack of confidence in health? Or is it a better understanding of the capriciousness of good health. Either way, every cough, headache, muscle ache, or stomach discomfort, sends me to a place of near panic and high anxiety.

I think sometimes it is hard for family and friends to understand this. Even medical professionals tend to give me funny looks. When I questioned another friend who lost her young son to a brain tumor, as to whether she was anxious of her own health, she said no, she saw her son as an anomaly. 

Unfortunately, I have lost my husband, along with three close friends (plus three spouses in my grief group), all in the past three years, to unusual cancers that couldn’t be explained. All four, including Kevin, were young, healthy, non-smokers, exercisers, who ate well and had no family history of cancer.

My world seems so full of anomalies that they’ve become common place.

And it is not just health, but other situations as well, where things can appear fine one day, and off the next, as though so much depends on the stars aligning just right, or finding a four-leaf clover in the grass. What will happen if…fill in the blank: I lose my job, someone gets my credit card and drains my savings account, we are in an accident, our house burns down. Like Ungerer’s questions of “are we going to make another day, are we going to be arrested,” there is no reason to believe these things will happen, they have not already happened, but the fear of them, the impending menace as Ungerer refers to it, is enough to tense my shoulders into hardened clay, put my stomach into knots, and me back into bed for a day.

The only cure for this is time and understanding, I know. But it does seem to be, in varying degrees, part and parcel of the widow’s life. A partner is by your side and healthy one day, and gone the next, whether from cancer, a heart attack caused by an undetected heart ailment, an aneurism, or a speeding car that ran a red light. 

Our lives cannot be consumed by anxiety--a feeling worse than fear because it is fear of the unknown, the improbable, and that which can’t really be controlled. Most days, I feel as though I am holding that double-edged sword: living life to the fullest on one side, or being consumed by fear on the other. I am physically challenged by its very weight. Each day, I approach it, gather my strength to lift it and determine to put it on its right side. Even after almost three years, this is a daily and difficult task.

I have learned two things about the human psyche since being widowed. Actually, I’ve probably learned more, but two things in particular are intriguing to me. I have learned the strength of some form of memory, not quite muscle memory, but something close. And I have learned the irrelevance of dates on a calendar. The two things are closely related as I deal with memories of my husband, our marriage, and the years we spent together, both before and during his cancer battle.

As a writer, I have spent much time dealing with memory. I’ve been working for a few years on a book about the life of my grandmother, a blind woman who raised three children on her own during the Great Depression after my grandfather died of typhoid fever in 1933. I watched as my mother’s memories of her childhood and her parents seemed to soften with each retelling. I listened closely and noticed changes in how she remembered. The struggles and difficulties receded and the love and good times came into sharper focus. 

In the days and weeks after Kevin’s death, I was traumatized. Not only because of the sudden loss, but also because of the two previous years spent in a full-throttle fight against an aggressive cancer. I felt angry, defeated, guilty, and completely inadequate. I kept re-living in my mind all the things we could have done differently had we only. . . known sooner, taken the diagnosis more seriously, gone to alternative practitioners earlier, changed his diet immediately, etc., etc. 

I had a recurring dream quite frequently during the first several months. In it, Kevin walks through the door of our house and I stare at him, stunned.

“You’re well,” I say.

“Of course,” he replies. “We beat it. I’m fine. I feel great.”

“But shouldn’t you have a CT scan, or a PET scan or something to make sure you’re ok?” I ask, because of course, I can’t believe he’s returned and he’s well.

And then I wake up, thinking if only we had one more chance. Why didn’t it end this way for us?

Nearly all of my memories during that time were of the two years prior —hospital visits, surgeries, trips to Chicago, Bloomington, and Ann Arbor. They were detailed and precise. I would sit down to my computer and realize that twenty minutes had passed, during which I was back in the hospital, or in a hotel room. 

Many of these memories were triggered by something that made me realize the time—either the time of day or the time of year. A cold, dreary day when the Midwestern snow has turned to gray slush put me immediately in Chicago where we stayed for several weeks while Kevin received radiation treatments. I knew that one year, or two years ago that very day we had driven down slushy Chicago streets.

In a similar way, I have not needed a calendar to remind me of the anniversary of Kevin’s passing. It happened on September 7^th. But for me, it will always be the day after Labor Day, or the first day of school. As the air begins to have a crispness about it, I remember. With the sound of a school bus rumbling by after summer vacation, I remember. I do not need a calendar to remind me. 

We have talked about this phenomenon in my widow’s group: how other triggers, not a number on a calendar page, are what bring the memories to the fore. The 7^th of September floats along each year, first to Wednesday, then to Thursday; a leap year pushes it two days ahead on the calendar grid. But for me, it’s always the same day of the week—Tuesday: the day after a day off, the day after we sent our son back to his new college dorm, the day after we brought hospice in. 

For others in the group it was something else. It will always be Friday for Sandy. That was always pizza and movie night in their house. Every Friday became a reminder to her of the one Friday when she went to set the table where the pizza lay in its box, and returned to the living room to find her husband slumped over while their son sat a few feet away selecting a DVD. The date of his death was there on the certificate, but it didn’t matter—it will always be pizza and movie Friday.

I don’t understand how the human brain and memory work. People kept telling me to give it time; that good memories would eventually crowd out the more difficult ones. For the most part, they are right. Slowly, good memories are taking their rightful place in my psyche. And I try to drink in and understand the triggers—something as slight as the angle of the sun through the window or the smell of lentil dhal. For now, tough memories are still more vivid. But I remind myself that Kevin was more than the last few years of his life, as was our marriage which spanned 26 years and two children. It was too short, but it was full of things worth remembering.