By Christopher Cudworth

Christopher and Linda Cudworth in 2012. During a window of cancer remission for Linda.

When you lose something in life that really matters to you, grief takes over.

The most obvious source of grief is losing a loved one. But there are many types and sources of grief. I maintain it takes a real goofball to deal with them all.

You know those thoughts in your head that come out of nowhere and make you feel like you’re a little nuts for thinking them? They multiply like crazy during periods of grief. It’s easy to blame yourself for strange thoughts and even cry aloud, “Why do I have these thoughts? Who thinks these things?” Only a goofball, right?

Welcome to the goofball club

Well, fellow goofballs, we all think these things. Most of us keep them to ourselves lest our friends think we are truly nuts.

Welcome to the Goofball club, in other words. Once you accept that you are a healthy form of goofball and that everyone on the planet is a goofball right along with you in some ways, you are liberated from guilt over your goofball thoughts. That’s a good thing.

At times we need to let our goofball thoughts run their course to an illogical end. In fact if we don’t let our minds wander a little, the absurd reality of life and loss will step in and start your goofball brain thinking weird thoughts anyway.

Planning ahead. Sort of. 

Early in marriage my wife and I got into a goofy discussion and began talking about our future and our ultimate ends. In a way the conversation took place over several years and evolved to the position that neither of us really wanted a traditional burial with a gravesite and a stone marker. That seems like a bit of a goofy thing to concern yourself with so early in a marriage, but it led us to discuss other important things like God and kids and life insurance policies. So it worked.

The net result was that my wife left instructions for me on what to do with her cremains. Having long ago opted to carry out the same process of cremation no matter who died first, she suggested we save some of our ashes for “us” so that we could be together.

Ashes to ashes. Really.

But my goofball brain still had a little trouble figuring out how to feel when I stopped by the funeral home to pick up my wife’s ashes. Carrying your wife under your arm is a surreal experience no matter how you look at it. I sat in the car and cried for a while, not knowing precisely why. O sure it seems obvious. I guess it made it all real. Again.

I had cried the day before as well, when the funeral home called and left a message asking me to call them back. I knew what that call would mean. But we get goofy about such things. Both the determinate and indeterminate truth is hard to handle.

A long shelf life

My problem with grief is that it really can have a long shelf life. In the Linda/Chris relationship our mutual grief extends back 8 years to when Linda was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Right away we felt grief for what once was, a life innocent of cancer. It was like being born into a reality we could not have anticipated, and didn’t.

Waves of grief, including a tsunami or two, would wash over us in the years ahead.

There was grief over her suffering.

Grief over her laments, and mine.

Grief over the difficulties of not being able, at times, to do the things she and I loved best.

Grief at the idea that together we needed to sacrifice the activities that originally bound us together.

Trying to ride through it

It was also hard to start anything new in our relationships. Linda tried cycling with me because it was low impact. We bought her a sweet rolling Trek Navigator 2.5, but her feet were so numb from neuropathy she could hardly control the pedals, it turned out. When she did get rolling her eyes would water profusely from the chemo. She had no eyelashes either, so there was nothing to stop the tears.

Then her wig wouldn’t stay on. Yet she still to tried. So hard at times.

But I do recall one fine summer day we rode out to Wasco and back on the Great Western Trail, a distance of about 6 miles. Linda started slowly at first, unsteady on the bike. Then on the way home she picked up speed and ceased to look back to see how close I might be riding. She was temporarily liberated.The wind was in her wig, you might say.

We finished and posed for a photo together at the start of the trailhead. I was proud of her. Grief relented in those moments. It is quite a fine thing to go from grief to relief. But it was so hard to make it last for much more than a day, a week, a month. If we were lucky.

Little secrets of survival

Living with grief is possible. Our little “secrets” of survival became the bonds upon which we based our mutual hope. Narrowing down your worldview and investing in the moment helps you expand time. A short walk suffices where a long walk once filled the day. Less alcohol. More campfires. Less burning daylight sun. More talks in the moonlight. Even these little secrets ran out soon enough.

As she put it in a “last wishes” letter written in 2011, “This can’t go on forever, right?”

Finite

She was right. No human gets out of here alive. Her life was cut short, or was it? It seems to me that everyone’s life is exactly the length it turns out to be. It’s absurd to speculate any other alternatives. So we deal with it.

On Good Friday I called my brother in Pennsylvania and told him I was attending services that evening. “Whoa…” he replied. He thought it might be “too soon,” and he was not the only one concerned that a Good Friday service could be too “dark” for someone grieving over the loss of a spouse.

But I told him. “I want to walk straight into the pain.”

He burst out laughing. He knows his brother well. We both knew it was the best way. Dive into the absurdity. Face death just like you face competition. You win some and lose some. Then you go on.

Catharsis

Going to church was the right thing to do.

It turned out the message was cathartic. Both pastors delivered huge insights that helped me greatly.Then came Easter. My gosh, I thought. The whole idea of your wife dying during holy week is so literal it’s goofy. What more direct confrontation with death and promise of life could you possibly imagine? We even had our Garden of Gethesemane moment. Trying to stay awake through intense periods of caregiving is not easy.

New awakenings

This morning I awoke thinking about the things I loved about her. In that moment I dwelt on the physical. I thought of her head to toe, everything I knew about her. It felt real, not imagined. Then I said a little prayer of thanks for her companionship. It felt right to do.

Our little dog Chuck is still a bit mystified by it all. Admittedly he and I have been in the same sort of mode. He’ll sit up in bed and pause a moment, as if he’s thinking: Something’s missing. Then he dives back under the covers to find a warm leg to lean on.

But he’s doing okay. We both are. We go on, that little dog and I, greeting our friends in our own goofy ways. We’re both a little hyper and by nature a little anxious and needing attention. So neither of us knows exactly how to experience life–or grief–in any other way. It’s our goofy little grief club. We didn’t sign up to be members, but then again, maybe we did, by loving someone fully.

Life, and death, is goofy that way.