How Did I Grieve?

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes, 26 seconds

Publicly Mourning
Helped Me to Learn and Grow

It has been almost thirty-eight months since my wife passed away. Losing a loved one, particularly a spouse, is an experience no one would wish for. Atul Gawande wrote in “Being Mortal” that we have come to believe that every medical professional has a magic cure to prevent death or postpone it indefinitely. However, the truth is that death is one of the life cycle events encoded in our DNA.

When Jan, my wife, passed away, I mourned as if I was the first ever to suffer such a loss. I didn’t know if I could choose to grieve in public or private, so I decided to write about my experiences and develop habits that served as guardrails. I shared my writings on social media, attended grief support groups, and even organized a memorial service where I spoke about Jan and our life together. Looking back, I realize the importance of public mourning as it not only helps us heal but also helps others understand and cope with their grief. My journey, marked by resilience and growth, is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to overcome even the most profound loss.

After reading Cody Delistraty‘s essay “It’s Mourning in America” in The New Yorker, I understood I had chosen the best option. The subtitle “In the past century, grief has shifted from a public process to a private problem—something meant to be solved. Is there a better way?” made me reflect on how I mourned and coped with grief. More than three years after the loss, it was a timely reminder to review where I was during the darkest days and how I have learned to live and thrive, showcasing the remarkable resilience of the human spirit.

I have experienced the loss of my parents, Jan’s parents, and friends over the years, which has given me firsthand knowledge of the impact of death. Witnessing the deceased has also been a familiar experience. However, I have struggled to understand how to mourn. As pointed out by Mr. Delistraty, there is a prevalent notion in American culture of seeking closure and swiftly moving on from loss. This concept of ‘closure’ implies that one should neatly tie up their emotions and memories of the deceased, and resume normal activities and routines without allowing oneself to linger in grief. This expectation can be challenging and even harmful, as it may prevent individuals from fully processing their grief and healing in their own time.

After nearly two years of caring for my wife before her passing, I find myself without an understanding of what ‘normal’ means, if it means anything, or how to attain a state of equilibrium that would enable me to carry on. This complexity of grief is a shared experience, and it’s okay not to have all the answers. The more than 100,000 words on my blog have been a form of public mourning. I have shared the depths of despair, the steps I have taken, and how I have grown and sometimes failed. I have found solace in nature, in the support of friends and family, and in giving back to the community. These experiences have been instrumental in my healing and growth, and I hope they can offer some guidance and comfort to others on a similar journey.

Sharing Jan’s Love

In his essay, Mr. Delistraty eloquently discusses public and private grieving traditions. Before the 20th century, death was more common, and mourning was a public process involving family, friends, and neighbors. Now, “there is the stigma of grief—the idea, now rampant in American life, of closure. Most people are reluctant to linger on loss. We are expected to get back to work and back to normal.”

For everyone I know who lost a loved one during COVID-19, the concept of closure was unachievable. Three days before my wife died, NJ Governor Murphy rescinded a rule that limited mourners at a funeral to a dozen as long as those attending practiced social distancing. This rule change was a relief, as it meant more people could attend the funeral and pay their respects to Jan. However, it also presented a new challenge. I am not sure how I would have managed a funeral with such strict limitations. Whom would I have excluded from attendance if only a dozen could attend? These unique circumstances would have added a layer of complexity to my mourning process and forced me to reconsider traditional notions of closure and mourning.

On May 5, during my wife’s funeral at Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge, it was lightly raining, and many of the almost one hundred-attendees had only a day’s notice about her passing and the funeral arrangements. In this shared moment of grief, I tried to express my deep gratitude to everyone who attended, as I recognized that they, too, were mourning Jan. Although some may have perceived my actions as unusual, I felt it was important to publicly thank them and expand our shared support network as we all navigated life without my wife. Their presence and support have been a source of strength and comfort, reminding me that I am not alone in this journey of grief and healing.

Merrit Malloy’s Epitaph, which Jan and I like, was read at her funeral and will be read at mine. When Rabbi Renee read the poem, I knew clearly that I had to give her love away if I would not only mourn but honor her. The last stanza is my wife’s final message to me.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

Merrit Malloy’s Epitaph

I am sharing her love not because I no longer love her but because I love her now more than ever. By sharing her love, it will come back to me even more potent. Sharing Jan’s love will keep her memory and legacy alive and strengthen us all. Sharing her passion will inspire and empower us to improve the world and make it a better place for everyone. Sharing Jan’s love is the true expression of my love for her! This commitment to sharing her passion is a testament to the enduring power of love and its ability to transcend even the most profound loss.

Being Mortal

I understood, standing by her grave, that my sense of loss was unique as Jan’s husband, but accepting that I was not the only one was a crucial step in how I would manage grief. Having read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande days before my wife’s diagnosis of lymphoma prepared me for hospice but also for acceptance that her death was unavoidable once she was also diagnosed with COVID. He reminds us that “when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.” As he writes in the book, the current system does not work and, in many cases, actually shortens life. Without that knowledge, I am not sure how I would have coped with hearing from her oncologists that there was no way of treating her and hospice was the only option.

Pages: 1 2 3

11 comments add your comment

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Half in Shadow

Read: December 2021

Get this book

Half in Shadow: A Novel

by Gemma Liviero

Half in Shadow by Gemma Liviero is an unforgettable novel about courage, love, and consequences at the dawn of World War I. In German-occupied Belgium, a tragic loss forces Josephine Descharmes to navigate dangerous new territory. By day it’s compliance, serving German officers at the Hotel Métropole. By night it’s resistance, working with her brothers underground to help Allied soldiers and civilians across the border into Holland. Both paths put her and her family at significant risk.

Before Jan’s death, I preferred to read non-fiction or fiction about historical events. Although I had read nothing by the author before this novel, I decided to read based on the summary. When I finished the book, the author described her goal as a writer in a manner that confirmed my decision.

“Much of my aim in the stories I write is to put human faces, be they fictional, to the many who lived through these events and imagine the experiences and reactions by innocent parties thrust into such situations.”

Half in Shadow: A Novel by Gemma Liviero

Josephine’s involvement in the resistance begins slowly and gains strength with every page. Her brothers Eugene, Xavier, and her mother become realistic due to the precise writing of Ms. Liviero.

Arthur, the English soldier who falls in love with Josephine, becomes an equal member of the resistance and the family. Franz, the German in love with Josephine, is not as strongly defined as appropriate as he is the enemy.

The Amazon overview provides a brief overview of the novel.

As Josephine struggles to keep her family safe, Arthur, a grief-stricken English soldier trapped behind enemy lines, finds purpose and hope with Josephine and her work. Meanwhile, Franz, a German officer remorseful for war casualties, offers her protection and opportunity. These two men from opposing sides will open her heart and test her loyalties.

Amid the sorrows of war and threats of mortal danger and betrayal, Josephine must steer her fate. In a country deprived of freedom, she will make an impossible choice—one that will forever impact the family she cherishes and the man she loves.

The book’s conclusion, which I will not reveal, brings together all of the novel’s threads in a way that reminded me of the power of love and family.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I highly recommend it.

Half in Shadow is the first time I have gotten a book from Amazon First Reads. I highly recommend First Reads as a way to read books earlier than their regular release. Half in Shadow is not scheduled to be published until January 1, 2022.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
Luky Us

Read: March 2022

Get this book

Lucky Us: A Novel

by Amy Bloom

Having surpassed my Goodreads 2022 reading goal, I wanted a lite, historical fiction book and found this one in the e-libraryLucky Us by Amy Bloom is a book that hooked me on the opening line – “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” I enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it.

The first section in Hollywood was the one I found less appealing. Partly that is because I identified with Eva, and she does not fulfill her leading role until the last two sections. Its depiction of how people survived the way years by sometimes is a reminder of our inner resilience.

Goodreads provides the following summary.

So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat, and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.

Register to Attend Celebrate Jan Day

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The Secret Hours

Read: January 2024

Get this book

The Secret Hours

by Mick Herron

Today, I started reading “The Secret Hours” by Mick Herron, a gripping spy thriller about a disastrous MI5 mission in Cold War Berlin. This book is a must-read for fans of “Slow Horses.” “The Secret Hours” is a standalone spy thriller that is both unnerving and poignant yet also has laugh-out-loud moments. It is the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.

Two years ago, a hostile prime minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, which aimed to investigate “historical over-reaching” by the British Secret Service. Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, two civil servants seconded to the project, were given unfettered access to all confidential information in the Service archives to ferret any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer.

However, MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn. The administration that created Monochrome has been ousted, and the investigation is a total bust. Griselda and Malcolm are stuck watching as the pounding London rain washes away their career prospects.

On the eve of Monochrome’s shuttering, an MI5 case file appears without explanation. It is the buried history of a classified operation in 1994 Berlin, which ended in tragedy and scandal, whose cover-up has rewritten thirty years of Service history.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
The Hunter: A Novel

Read: March 2024

Get this book

The Hunter: A Novel

by Tana French

Today, I began reading “The Hunter: A Novel” by Tana French, often called the Queen of Irish crime fiction. The story takes place in a small village in the West of Ireland during a hot summer. Two men arrive, one returning home and the other seeking riches. However, one of them is also seeking death.

Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago police officer who moved to rural Ireland for a peaceful life. He has built a relationship with a local woman named Lena and has been mentoring Trey Reddy, a troubled teenager on a better path. But when Trey’s long-lost father returns, accompanied by an English millionaire and a plan to find gold in the townland, everything they have built is threatened. Cal and Lena are willing to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey is not interested in protection. What she wants is revenge.

This novel, written by the acclaimed author described by The New York Times as “in a class by herself,” tells a nuanced and atmospheric tale about what we are willing to do for our loved ones, what we will do for revenge, and what we may have to sacrifice when the two collide.

×
We Are All the Same in the Dark

Read: January 2023

Get this book

We Are All the Same in the Dark

by Julia Heaberlin

We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin is a novel I highly recommend and wish I had read earlier. The title summarizes the reality of all humans, that in the dark we are all the same. Disabilities do not define us, just as being a widow does not define who I am. In this twisty psychological thriller, Julia Heaberlin paints two unforgettable portraits of a woman and a girl who redefine perceptions of physical beauty and strength. Her novel has helped me redefine my grief.

I have been a widow for almost twenty-one months. After a trauma of that magnitude, it is easier to let the widowed state define me. But I am more than just a widow! But I am a father, grandfather, friend, neighbor, advocate, and more. Reading We Are All the Same in the Dark helped me embrace myself and not wallow in widowhood.

The novel begins with the discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road who threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town’s legendary cold case. In the first section, I was still determining if I wanted to continue. Once I read about Odette Tucker and Angel, it became a page-turner. 

This line from Odette given to Angelica, aka Angel, summarizes the characteristics that each of us should live by.

Tender. Resilient. Strong. Resourceful. Kind. Empathetic.—Six words Marshall Tucker wrote on a piece of paper to describe his daughter, Odette.

As a mensch-in-training, I will strive to live by those six words.

We are truly all the same in the dark.

We Are All the Same in the Dark is the ninth book I read this year.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town’s Baptist church, the police station, and the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and a new documentary about the crime.

When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town’s youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its missing girl to come home. But Odette can’t look away. She shares a wound that won’t close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her history with the missing Tru.

Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save the lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past–the night her friend disappeared. This night inspired her to become a cop, the night that wrote them all a role in the town’s dark, violent mythology.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
Neverhome: A Novel

Read: November 2024

Get this book

Neverhome: A Novel

by Laird Hunt

Today, I began reading “Neverhome: A Novel” by Laird Hunt, a critically acclaimed work that has garnered praise for its unique storytelling. The protagonist introduces herself as Ash, which is not her real name. She is the devoted wife of a farmer, yet she has left her husband to enlist as a Union soldier during the Civil War. “Neverhome” narrates Ash Thompson’s harrowing journey as she faces the chaos of battle in the South.

Amidst scenes of bloodshed, hysteria, and heartbreak, Ash undergoes a profound transformation. She evolves from a devoted wife to a hero, a folk legend, a madwoman, and, to some, a traitor to the American cause. This complex journey of self-discovery adds depth to her character and makes her story all the more compelling.

Laird Hunt‘s captivating novel illuminates the adventurous women who chose to fight rather than remain behind. It also presents a compelling mystery: Why did Ash leave while her husband stayed? This enigma, shrouded in the fog of war, keeps us intrigued and eager to uncover the truth. What challenges must she overcome to return to her husband?

In beautifully crafted prose, Hunt‘s rebellious young heroine battles her way through history. Her emotional journey, filled with longing, fear, and determination, resonates with us as she strives to return to her husband and captures our hearts.

×

Discover more from Sharing Jan’s Love

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading