Grief elbows you into corners. It makes you sit uncomfortably with emotions, memories, regrets, decisions, and actions. It forces you to ask yourself the difficult questions: did I love well? did I love enough? did I say what I needed to say? did I waste time? did I ever—even once—get it right? And then ask why: why did I waste so much time? Why did I get mad about those stupid little things? Outside of grieving a terrible loss, we never force ourselves to go through this much introspection, and why would we put ourselves through it? Rarely do I come out of it giving myself any kind of benefit of the doubt. No, I mostly just add to the doubt. Standing in that metaphorical corner where grief has pushed me, I am metaphorically knee-deep in doubt, like a metaphorical pile of dust swept up from a long-neglected metaphorical room.

I have learned that grief is about loss; about not seeing this person ever again, or hearing his voice, or kissing him goodnight, or even picking up those socks he left on the floor. Or not asking his opinion, or telling him about my day, or finishing his sentence, or asking him, yet again, to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

Yes, grief, especially of a spouse, is also about a lost relationship. It brings into strong focus the good and the bad of it. It is about lost opportunity: the chance to apologize, to try again, to get a do-over. It’s about coming to terms with how you lived together, realizing that it can’t be fixed or improved upon or made better or given another chance. I try to cut myself some slack. We were both in it together, I remind myself; neither of us experts. We were both so young. Our marrige wasn’t perfect, but it was better than many. We lasted. We talked things through. The clichés come to my mind so often I think I should turn them into cheers—cute little rhymes I can say to myself when I’m feeling most vulnerable. Give me a B. Give me an R. Give me an E,A,K!

I also try to give value to this loss, to make it meaningful by understanding that I’ve indeed learned from all the experience and reflection. And I know that I have. Again there is a multitude of clichés about not sweating small stuff, understanding that life’s short, and valuing every day. 

But aside from that, what do I know that I would perhaps take into any future relationship? Quite a bit, actually. I’ll share only one thing here. It is the most important nugget I’ve discerned from hours of contemplation. That is that I would make sure that I am always the kind of partner I want to be. If there is something, anything, about a relationship that makes me unhappy, it needs to be addressed; same for my partner.  What I realize most about any of the really difficult times Kevin and I experienced is that, thinking back, I didn’t really like myself or my response during those times. Not liking myself made me unhappy, an emotion I quickly shared and that only made things worse. So often Kevin thought I was unhappy with him, but really, I was unhappy with me or with how I reacted to a situation. In the moment it’s difficult to be objective, and nearly impossible to be objective about oneself. But looking back (and I cannot say that I have the “benefit” of being able to look back, because nothing about this situation is in any way beneficial) I realize that I was unhappy about me, about where I was emotionally or what I was saying or doing. I wish I had understood this many years ago. I know I would have been much happier, and I know now how important that is to the total equation.

I recently finished Paul Lisicky’s lovely memoir The Narrow Door. It is the story of the parallel losses of Lisicky’s relationships with his best friend, the writer Denise Gess, when she died from cancer, and with his partner M due to a breakup. I have filled the book with pink Post-Its to highlight lines that I particularly understand or with which I agree. I am not surprised that many of them are about grief and reactions to cancer, illness, and death. On many of them I have written one word: "yes!" He gets it and articulates it so very well. It is the extraordinary wonder of literature that his truth is mine; that he and I, having never met, but having gone through similar events, have these same exact experiences and thoughts. 

What surprises me though, are the three or four notes that I’ve placed in the chapters about his  breakup with M. Is the subject matter all that different, I wonder? Best friend, lover, partner, husband, death, grief, regret, analysis. I realize how they are all bound together for me. Kevin's death was not only the loss of my best friend, but also the ending of my marriage. I am left to grieve both. To try, like Lisicky, to understand how both friendship and love ended too soon. While Paul Lisicky grieves the loss of two people, I grieve the loss of one, but of the same two relationships. I hope that Kevin and I got it right, and I try to come to terms with the times I and we didn’t do so well. 

To that end I examine and scrutinize, turning the memories over in my hand, asking those questions of “did I,” “did we” and “why.” Not in an effort to fix, because it’s too late for that, but because grieving makes it impossible for me to avoid doing so. I want to believe we mostly got it right. I want to hope that our time together was good, that Kevin’s short time here was made better by our marriage. For me, it is how I grieve, it is a part of the inescapable need to appraise this life, his life, and our life together.

It’s January, so I shouldn’t be surprised that I find myself feeling blue. January has always been a difficult month. December is often gray and cold, longer nights and shorter days. But there is the anticipation of the holidays; of friends and family gathered. There is no such fun in January—it is yet too cold and gray to anticipate the possible rebirth and warmth of spring; weeks on the other side of December’s cheer. It’s a tough time. Kevin used to steer clear of me in January, knowing that I struggled. He would surreptitiously put seed catalogs where I would find them hoping it would bring me from my gloom.

I had made the conscious decision at the end of last year to spend January in a sort of hibernation. Last fall brought working, traveling, teaching, sending my daughter off to college, and moving to a new home in a new city. It was a time of great change and exhaustion; a time of readjustment, excitement, and fear. Mostly, it was a time when I was too busy to think. So I made the decision that I would spend January being fairly quiet. I would occasionally visit nearby museums or see a film, but mostly I would concentrate on writing, reading, resting, and my job. Though I wouldn’t turn down an invitation, I wouldn’t actively seek out things to do with others. I knew it would be difficult, but I also felt it was necessary. Part of the difficulty is that slow, quiet alone-time often brings opportunities for grief to settle in with me under the covers.

It became even harder than I anticipated with the loss of people and places early into the month. The news of David Bowie’s passing caught me (and the rest of the world) unprepared and deeply saddened. His music fills a fairly large part of my collection. Early on in my musical life I became enamored of glam rock and he was its godfather. His creativity and artistic abilities were so deep and wide. What an impact he had on the worlds of music, art, and fashion. As always happens when someone famous passes, there were comments from other widowed friends. People say that they don’t understand their friends being so sad about this person that they’ve never even met. How can people even begin to equate the loss of this person with the grief they are feeling over the loss of their partner and soulmate, they ask.

I understand their feelings, but I also want to explain that I perfectly understand the outpouring of sadness and how these strangers can feel such a loss in their lives. No, they didn’t know David Bowie personally, but they knew a great deal about him because of his music, because he shared so much of himself with the world. We didn’t know him intimately, but we grieve his loss because he knew us, or

I’ve also learned this month that my favorite coffee shop, Foggy Bottom, is closing. It is also a loss. It is where I sequestered myself to write, feeling for the first time like a real writer as I sat down with my laptop and a well-made mocha. Most of my Master’s degree was accomplished there—hundreds of pages of thesis and multiple critical essays. I became friends with the owner, Doug, and we often chatted about books. I recently confessed that it was difficult to go into the shop when Kevin was sick, because seeing people there going about their normal lives felt like a slap in the face. It is difficult to explain how much one cannot understand how everyone else’s life can go on when theirs is so upside down. Many nights I drove past on my way home from the hospital and wished that the coffee shop was open so I could stop in and pretend that everything was the way it was before, even for just ten minutes.  I couldn’t bear to go in after Kevin died because it was also a place where I enjoyed being by myself, a place that I appreciated as an escape. How could I have ever

I also had the opportunity to walk through the first apartment that Kevin and I lived in after we married. I had a small apartment on my own and we lived in it for about a month after we married. But then we moved to our first place together, Third Street—an apartment so full of character and charm that it came to be known as simply that “Third Street.” We had a tiny place in an old house that had been divided up and turned into four apartments. We made life-long friends, cooked in a closet-turned-kitchen, and learned to live with each other in that apartment. The house has been sold and the new owners are doing extensive renovations to both the house and the barn behind the house. Some of the character remains, but much has been replaced by shiny new countertops and stark, white cabinetry. It is more efficient and modern and will make a profit for the new owners after they’ve put many hours of labor into it. As I walked up the oak staircase into what was our apartment, many memories came flooding back: cooking in that kitchen, studying at the desk in the bedroom, walking to the ice cream shop. It was harder than I thought to stand in that space, but I’m glad I did.

So in addition to telling my fellow widows that we can grieve for people we didn’t know, I would also tell them that we grieve for more than just people. I suppose when we grieve for a person it’s for more than just the flesh and blood of that person. But we also grieve for places and things, and events, and times, and ways of being. I want to tell them that grief really knows no bounds or limits. I remember when we were expecting our second child. We sat our son down and explained to him that our love was like the flame of a candle—I’m sure I read this in a parenting book and hoped it would work for us. The idea, though, is that the flame of one candle can light many others and never diminish itself. Love is like that, but so is grief. The grief I feel at the loss of David Bowie doesn’t diminish any of the grief I have felt at any other loss, especially Kevin’s. If anything, it makes it richer and more powerful. The grief I feel at losing my favorite coffee shop, or of now living in a different place, they all just signal for me that I’ve been fortunate enough to have many attachments. They may not each hold the same importance, but losing them means losing a piece of the rich and varied tapestry that is my life. I’m thankful to have had them, to know that my life is better in some way because I’ve connected at more than a superficial level with the man I married, and the music I listen to, and the people who lived in the downstairs flat, and the guy that served me coffee. 

I’ll get through January with more tears shed than I anticipated. But they are tears well-earned, and I am grateful for them.

Today marks five years since Kevin died. I still often live in a state of disbelief that it has been so long since I last saw Kevin, last spoke to him, last said goodnight or good morning, or all the other million little things that make up the day of two people who live together and love each other.  I am still surprised at how time can simultaneously seem to rush forward and stand still. It has been forever and it has been no time at all.

We have moved on, mostly by putting one foot in front of the other and trying our best to live in a way that would make Kevin proud. I think there are more smiles and laughter these days though the most fun times still invoke the realization that Kevin is missing. That feeling will never leave my life, nor do I want it to. And indeed he has missed so much, especially this past year with my daughter’s high school graduation and delivery to college.

It is this added grief that has marked these past 365 days as different, indeed harder. This year has brought together the grief borne of both loss and of letting go. They are two different kinds of grief, but they have equal weight in my heart. I know I must let go of my children, and believe that Kevin and I did the best we could to raise them to be strong, thoughtful, caring, creative people. I see so much of their father in their appearance, their actions, their mannerisms, and their thought processes. I am grateful that his presence lives on in them so brightly. But to say it is easy to watch my children fly away would be a complete lie. If I could have them back in the house living with me, I would do it in a minute! What is this cruel job of parenting that our work is to shower all the love and patience we have upon our children in order to make them capable of living without us?

I have thought a lot lately about the so-called “sandwich generation” of which I was very much a part. It seems about ten years ago much was written about us—those people who, through coincidences of birth, marriage, and childbearing timing, were caring for both elderly parents and young children. I was firmly in that sandwich. Born to older parents (mom was 38 and dad was 43 when I came along), and delaying childbirth myself until I was 29, I spent several years caring for loved ones on both ends of the age spectrum. I remember having a conversation with Richard Russo, one of my very favorite authors. He was planning a trip to Ann Arbor for a book signing and I was involved in the planning. He explained that his schedule was iffy because of this very thing—an 85-year-old mother and a 19-year-old daughter, both of whom needed him. I mentioned an epiphany I had recently had: that a big part of the problem with both of these groups is that they each wish for more freedom than is good for them: young people because they aren’t mature enough to handle it, older people because it is physically risky. Yet as caregivers, it was our responsibility to keep them safe, to say no to dangerous desires.  At the time I had both a 16-year-old and an 88-year-old arguing with me about how often and how far they could drive. It was a challenging time to maneuver through sanely.

Now, my parents are both gone, and I have taken my youngest to college. Of course, I have had the added loss of my husband during that time, which makes this even harder. So often in the past five years, I have made decisions on my own, wondering if it was the right choice, if it is what Kevin would have done. I constantly question whether I’ve helped my kids through their time of grief, if I showed them my own grief and vulnerability often enough. I grapple with balance, with encouraging them to be on their own all the while fearing their leaving. Simultaneously, I try to shrug off the feeling of being an “adult orphan” though many times that’s how I feel. I wish for my parents’ advice and counsel, for them to be here guiding me in my own parenting, and sharing in the accomplishments of their grandchildren, whom they cherished beyond measure.

So I wonder, what becomes of us sandwich generation folks once the "bread" has been removed? We are dealing with two different kinds of grief, but it is grief nonetheless. One form of bereavement brings pain, loss, anger, sadness. The other is differently colored, with pride, hope, and the ability to smile through the tears. I was completely unprepared for the first, but had my children’s entire lifetime to prepare for the latter. 

Preparation doesn’t make it any easier I am finding. Loss, whether through death or letting go, is painful and heart-wrenching, it just is. My heart swells with satisfaction and delight at the sight of my son and daughter strolling across their respective college campuses, working at their part-time jobs, or handling difficult situations on their own. In the past few weeks alone they’ve signed leases, closed and opened bank accounts, settled in with perfect strangers, and dealt so maturely with a broken heart. All the matters of adult life for which I hope I have prepared them but which I must admit, I’d rather still be doing for them. 

Rarely do we truly realize how important it is to be needed in the midst of the needing time. When we’re deep in it, it feels like muck that holds us back, that weighs us down, that won’t let us have a moment’s rest; like quicksand that leaves you gasping for breaths and flailing to keep some of your own identity and autonomy. Yet, sit long enough on dry land without that needing, and one realizes quickly how painful it is to feel parched and arid, how much the needing, while taking your autonomy, was also giving you purpose and identity and life. 

Kevin loved his children so much, and worked so hard to be the kind of parent he hoped to be. In the end, he also fought so hard to stay here with them. On the fifth anniversary of Kevin’s passing, I honor his memory by tearfully and begrudgingly celebrating the independence of our children.

I remember the second or maybe third time I went out with Kevin. We ended up at his apartment, with a bag of Fritos and a six-pack of Stroh’s Signature beer. We had both attended college classes that day, then worked an eight-hour shift at the Hyatt hotel. It was closing in on midnight and I had a class the next day at 8 a.m.

We started talking about stuff that made me think this wasn’t going to be a short-term relationship—how impossible it was to get along with our parents, plans for the future, how we would raise kids, whether we believed in God, what we wanted to be doing when we turned thirty. I remember telling him that my biggest goal was to live life with few regrets. “They’ll eat you alive,” I think I said, trying to seem deep and introspective.

I’m not sure how well I’ve done at living the kind of life my twenty-year-old-self wanted me to live. Regrets are tricky, sly creatures that sneak up on you when you think you’re doing fine. I have my share of the usual regrets—not keeping in better touch with friends, not learning earlier how to budget and save, not getting back to grad school earlier, wishing I spoke better French. When it comes to our marriage, I find regrets to be moving targets. I regret some choices or situations when I’m grieving, but those same things seem less worrisome when I think rationally. There are times when I regret renovating our house. It was a significant accomplishment. But, in the end, we should have spent the time and money sucked up by our house projects on family travel. Perhaps, I sometimes think, we should have waited a while to marry, taking the time to better establish ourselves in our individual pursuits. It could have made me better prepared for the life I’m now living. 

But these are regrets as viewed through the rearview mirror, borne of tragedy, and with hindsight as my guide. They are the kinds of regrets about which I can only say there’s nothing to be done about that now.  

I’ve considered the impossible-to-change regrets lately as I read Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal. My reading of the book was followed by a lively discussion at my local bookstore. Being Mortal is Gawande’s look at our inability to understand and properly care for the dying, be they elderly or terminally ill. The medical community has a natural conflict, with their first priority of keeping someone alive when, perhaps that is not what’s really best. In the chapters on terminal illness, Gawande points out instances where the decision to avoid attempts at prolonging life actually led to better quality of life for the time remaining. I can only say that it is easy to proclaim with a healthy voice, the desire to “end it” if you ever were to find yourself extremely debilitated by disease, but more difficult to do so in the midst of that situation.

Kevin and I talked many times about how we both would never want to be kept alive on ventilators or feeding tubes. As the Terry Schiavo tragedy unfolded we both made sure the other understood this. But once we found ourselves in the midst of our own tragedy, it wasn’t so easy. After two spinal cord surgeries, the second of which was mishandled and led to formation of a hematoma that nearly killed him, Kevin was left a quadriplegic. Rather than say it’s time to stop, he instead implored me to keep fighting with him, his only real request of me during that time was that I never give up on him.

So I didn’t. 

My regrets don’t have to do with prolonging Kevin’s life. I am grateful for every second he was here. But the choice to continue fighting meant that we were in battle mode every second. It meant that, when hospice told me he only had a few days, I couldn’t go to him and tell him that we needed to say our “I love you’s” and “goodbyes.” It meant we marched on, side-by-side, rather than face-to-face, toward an inevitability that neither of us could accept by putting words to it. We continued battling disease until one of his tumors ruptured and he was gone within minutes. 

I do regret that we didn’t have some quiet minutes between us; that our choice to keep going prevented us from a peaceful end.

Being involved in grief and widows groups, I have learned a few things. I have talked with widows whose spouses died suddenly from accidents or heart attacks, and those who, like Kevin, suffered for years with heart disease, cancer, or Parkinson’s. Rarely in my conversations have I found someone who didn’t have regrets about the way things ended. I hear lamentations like, “I knew he wasn’t coming back to me, so I said it was ok to turn off the ventilator. Now I wonder why I did that. I feel like I killed him.” Or, “I told him it was ok to let go, so he did. He slipped away. It was peaceful, but now I hate myself. Why did I tell him it was ok and not to keep fighting?”

I suppose what I’ve learned most of all is that is that there seldom is a truly peaceful end, one that is not fraught with sadness and grief and tinged with flecks of emotions like guilt and regret that color the situation impossible. I think, too, sometimes we all look for regrets, or at least for things we feel we should have done better or differently. It is perhaps, all tied up in wanting, more than anything, for the outcome to have been otherwise.

I’ve also reconciled (the opposite of regret?) myself to the knowledge that Kevin died the way he needed to: fighting; trying to keep disease, despair, fear, and death, at bay for just another day. He needed that. Had I said anything to him to signal my acceptance of the end, well, I can’t even begin to think of the terror it would have caused in him. I know I would also regret having done that, so how to resolve? It just isn’t possible. I suppose letting him battle on was my small gift to him, bequeathed unknowingly, that I now must live with.

So while it might have been good for some of the patients in Being Mortal to accept the end, we need to understand that this was their choice. As admirable as it is, it isn’t everyone’s. It certainly wasn’t Kevin’s.