One Week Later, Now and Then

A Rainy Monday, 28 Mar 2016
Yesterday, Easter Sunday, was a hard day for me; I cried several times during our three hours of church meetings. My chest literally felt heavy.
I believe David’s spirit and personality lives on right now; I believe David's body will be resurrected. But I hurt, badly. Emotional pain is like a broken arm: I believe it will heal but that doesn’t change the intensity and immediacy of the pain. One of our LDS church leaders, Sister Neill Marriott, has described her family’s experience when their 21-year-old daughter, Georgia, died after being struck by a truck while on her bicycle:

Following Georgia’s mortal death, our feelings were raw, we struggled, and still today we have moments of great sorrow, but we hold to the understanding that no one ever really dies. Despite our anguish when Georgia’s physical body stopped functioning, we had faith that she went right on living as a spirit…

 Yes, that’s what it is: raw like an open wound. It hurts to touch it; it throbs even without being touched.

I’m grateful that I can feel and grieve. It’s all part of mother-love. Let me assure you, I have more good days than bad, but yesterday and today are pretty bad.


Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Starting out early, we drive the familiar highways down the East Coast: the Mass Pike, I-84 through Connecticut, I-95 through New Jersey, a snippet of Delaware, then Maryland. The famous Washington Beltway into Virginia. With family in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, we’ve driven the roads many times.
David’s flight from Detroit lands at 3:32 p.m. at Dulles Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Jim drops me off at the terminal and goes to the cell phone lot. I stand near the moving baggage carousel, watching the double door where David and his escort, Brent Mann, will emerge after their long flights from Korea via Detroit. I’m excited to see him, but when I reach out to affectionately take his arm he pulls it brusquely away and growls. He has phlebitis from the IVs in the Seoul hospital and his arm is painfully swollen.
We wait for the duffel bags, which Brent grabs, and head out to the curb. Jim picks us up and we drive I-495 to Walter Reed Military Medical Center at 8901 Rockville Pike in Bethesda, MD. In my youth it was the National Naval Medical Center and I remember seeing its distinctive grey limestone tower on TV when LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th POTUS) got his gall bladder out. Now our son, David is admitted there.



David settles into his private room and we spend the night with my brother Steve and his wife Maria. One tender mercy among countless others is that Steve and Maria live just two miles away from Walter Reed. They generously open their home to us and we settle into their comfortable guest room.

27 March 2014
Not satisfied to accept the Korean bone marrow biopsy results, the doctor performs David’s second biopsy. This involved screwing a large hollow needle into his hip bone (ilium) to remove a sample of spongy bone marrow and then removing some liquid bone marrow. The preliminary results confirm the Korean diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Further test results will be available in a week or two but this is enough information to continue the chemotherapy begun in Korea.
David eats three meals and feels well, but moves slowly and lies down most of the day. He is assigned four doctors: an oncologist, a hematology fellow (receiving specialized training after a residency), an internal medicine doctor, and a resident. There is also a charge nurse, a regular nurse, and a technician.

28 Mar 2014
David has a port installed surgically into his chest so that chemo and blood products can be delivered directly into the large vein (vena cava), which can handle infusion easier than veins in the arms.
Jim and I read the informational pages about the chemotherapy drugs, daunorubicin and cytaribine. One serious side effect: infertility. When Jim expresses deep concern, Ensign Frank, all decked out in a waterproof green gown and thick gloves to protect her from the extremely toxic drugs, scurries out to get the doctor. He arrives and explains to us that: 1) AML is deadly, 2) powerful chemotherapy is the best option available, and 3) David received the same drugs in Korea, so the damage is already done. Chemotherapy commences.
From the fifth floor stairwell window I can see the white marble towers and golden spires of the LDS Washington Temple, where Jim and I were married in 1979. It’s glorious at night.

The Day My Life Changed Forever

March 19, 2014. I’m drifting into consciousness when my cellphone rings. I’m lying on the double bed in Peter’s and Xiomara’s guest bedroom in Riverdale, Bronx, New York.


The call is from David. He’s been in Korea with the Army for about a month. He asks if I was asleep. Truthfully I tell him I was just waking up. He’s got bad news: he has leukemia. “How are you doing?” he asks. “I feel calm,” I answer.
And, surprisingly, I do feel calm. I described to David an interview of Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, the moon shot mission that went terribly wrong two days into the mission and never landed on the moon. People would ask him whether the crew panicked when they realized the spaceship was severely damaged. Well, he said, we could have screamed and banged around the ship for five minutes, but then, when we stopped, we’d be in the same situation. So we skipped the panic.


David and I talk for a while. He’s being transferred to Walter Reed Military Medical Center; he’s not sure when he’ll arrive.
Jim and I have plane reservations to visit my sister Maggie in southern California; we’re scheduled to leave Saturday, March 22nd and stay until the 30th. It will be our West Coast tour, visiting Maggie and John in Fullerton, then flying to San Francisco to visit Ted and Kathy Perry. Jim’s never been to San Francisco; I drove through it in 1995, in a purple-tailgated mini-van full of kids, pulling the tent trailer. For the next three days we wait for the call and debate: should we go to California?  On Thursday we decide to go; we might as well wait for the phone call in the southern Californian sunshine. But on Friday we get definite word: David will arrive at Dulles Airport on Wednesday, March 26th. So we cancel our flights for the next day. The airline, United allows us a year to use the credit, minus a $200 change fee. The next time we flew it was cheaper to fly Southwest than redeem the credit.

Diving Under

Several years ago I took a lifeguard refresher course. It was held at a YMCA summer camp property, in early June; school was still in session, so the camp was empty.
I arrive with my handmade spandex swimming suit: midnight blue with purple flowers, and a matching swim cap. I love the print and am pleased with my handiwork creating a coordinated look. The cap has one seam down the middle with a flower carefully centered above each ear.
The one exercise I always hate in lifeguard training is retrieving a 10 pound rubberized brick from a depth of 10 feet. My ears are very sensitive to water pressure and I avoid surface diving when I can. (Scuba diving is very different. I equalize my ear air pressure as I slowly descend. But speed is of the essence when diving for a heavy black brick.)
The dark New Hampshire lake water is cold but full of plant life. As I dive for the brick, I can’t see the bottom. At six feet down I feel my beloved, color-coordinated swim cap slip up my scalp. I know I will lose it if I don’t stop diving and grab it, but I am more certain that I don’t have a second dive in me. So I push on, stroking with my arms, kicking with my feet, diving deeper and deeper into the abyss, my lungs burning with the desire to breath.
I know, I know, I’m being overdramatic here. But it really is an ordeal, albeit a self-inflicted one.
The experience of pushing myself down into that dark water, desperate for a breath, desperate to get it right the first time, that’s "The Well of Grief" David Whyte describes.

And today is the seventh monthiversary of David’s death. I wake up slowly after disturbing night dreams. As I clear the supper dishes from the dish drain (we don’t have a dishwasher) I feel exhausted. It’s like flu, though I know it’s not flu. My arms feel heavy, I’m easily out of breath, climbing a flight of stairs takes extra effort.

Last month I told my therapist, David Battit, that I thought since everyone with experience says the first year is the hardest that each passing month would be easier. He doesn’t think it works that way, and it isn’t working that way for me. He suggests a grief cycle, feeling in turns better and then worse again.

One of my worries is that I’ll sink into clinical depression. Having bipolar, it’s an oft-recurring question: when is a mood innocuous and when is it a harbinger of a serious downturn? I’ve returned to facilitating at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). In the Newcomers group, I routinely report on my experience after my mom, then my dad, and then David died: grief is different from depression. I’m sad, it hurts terribly, but it’s entirely different than depression.

However, in the forest of my mind runs a stream of awareness that depression could develop at any time. Just because I’m grieving doesn’t mean I won’t get depressed. I’m grateful for each day that finds me not depressed and hope my meds and therapy keep working.

Extra-soft Toothbrushes

The first time I shopped for extra-soft toothbrushes was, you guessed it, when David was first diagnosed with leukemia. At Walter Reed Medical Center he had mouth sores, so I walked into downtown Bethesda and bought out the Rockville Pike CVS’s supply of extra-soft toothbrushes, all four of them. I’d never even heard of them. They cost twice as much as the national brand toothbrushes. I always buy the store-brand and in fact Jim’s favorites are the ten for a dollar ones I found at the dollar store. But that spring this was something I could do to take care of David.

Being David’s housekeeper for his last fifteen months, I am pretty sure he didn’t brush his teeth much, if at all. He certainly didn’t keep a toothbrush in sight in the bathroom or his bedroom.
But now, it doesn’t matter how infrequently David cleaned his teeth while he was sick.

Recently I had a viral infection of my gums. After a day or two my gums became so inflamed that even the extra soft bristles caused pain. Is that how David felt for months? He never complained of pain. Sometimes he would go to clinic and when they asked, what’s your pain level (on a scale of one to ten), he’d say, “Seven.” A seven for him would probably be a thirteen for me. I was grateful that he would answer these questions accurately for them; I was sad he didn’t share his pain with us more.

What else doesn’t matter? That he didn’t use the incentive spirometer to keep his lungs clear of pneumonia.


It doesn’t matter that when he got pneumonia in his last months it was never cured. It doesn’t matter that for seventeen months he didn’t walk around the block or lift handheld weights for exercise. It doesn’t matter that he stopped eating in the last days of his life.

All these physical concerns we mortals have don’t matter for him. I have no more worrying to do, but more crying.

But Like a Child at Home

One Sunday, about two months after David’s death, Jim and I go to our friend Judy Pate's memorial service. Judy first was diagnosed with thyroid cancer ten years ago, was declared cancer-free, but developed uterine cancer in 2008 and liver (bile duct) cancer in 2012. She died October 1, 2015.

For the memorial service our congregation’s choir sing My Shepherd Will Supply My Need, arranged by Mack Wilberg. We actually have a harp, flute, and oboe to accompany us.
Yes, just two months after David’s death and I’m singing in the choir. I stand in the second row, behind my tall friend Kimberly. And I am actually able to sing some; I just can’t quite get through the final sentence:

Here would I find a settled rest,
while others go and come;
no more a stranger, nor a guest,
but like a child at home.

After the closing prayer, Jim and I sit silently in the side front pew and listen to Linda play the beautiful postlude music, my head on Jim’s shoulder, crying quietly, trying not to sob.

I didn’t cry during David’s service; for this funeral it feels good not to be the center of attention and to be able to know my own grief.