Dealing with grief, one way or the other

A day or two after my wife died from a stroke on Valentine’s Day, our daughter Jenny helped me go through Gail’s prescription medications that would no longer be needed. Out went the Coumadin that kept her blood from forming life-threatening clots. Out went the Neurontin that battled her incessant nerve pain. Out they went, and others — out, out, out.

But Jenny paused when we came to the Cymbalta (an antidepressant) and the Xanax (an antianxiety drug).

“You may want to keep these handy,” she said. “You might need them for yourself for a while.”

I thanked her for the suggestion, but when she went back home the next day, out those drugs went, too.

Because although I know those drugs might help dull the pain of losing the woman I have loved since we were children, and to whom I was married for almost 49 years, that wasn’t the kind of help I was looking for.

To be clear, losing Gail hurt like hell — but I wanted it to hurt like hell, because there has been nothing in my life worth hurting for as much as this. I didn’t want to run from the pain. I didn’t want to hide from the pain. I didn’t want to mask the pain until it was unrecognizable.

I wanted to embrace the pain, because the pain was a living reminder that I had lost something precious to me. I wanted to live with the pain for as long as it took for the pain to give up on me and to move on, leaving behind only a scar.

And day-by-day, little by little, I can feel pain’s grip on me weaken. I don’t know how long it will take for it to drop away utterly, or even if it ever will. But I can wait. I’ll see it through.

When my friend Rick learned of Gail’s death, he wrote to me and shared a few lines from the autobiography of Joe Biden, who is no stranger to the pain of losing his wife and young daughter in a 1972 car crash, and the death of his son in 2015 to cancer. In the book, Biden talks of “the constant weight of grief” and how its grip may seem insurmountable:

“Just when you think, ‘Maybe I’m going to make it,’ you’re riding down the road and you pass a field and you see a flower, and it reminds you. Or you hear a tune on the radio. Or you just look up in the night. You know, you think, ‘Maybe I’m not going to make it, man.’ Because you feel at that moment the way you felt the day you got the news.”

Been there. Done that.

Like the street corner where Gail and I always turned to go home after our daily roll ‘n stroll. Right there the afternoon sun glistens off the pond, and we always sang the old Hamm’s Beer commercial: “From the land of sky blue waters, waters…” When I pass that corner now I feel my voice choke up.

Or the time two weeks after Gail’s death that I drove past Texas Roadhouse restaurant, which Gail loved. “Ooh,” I said to myself. “We haven’t been there in a while. Maybe tonight Gail would like to…”

Oh. Yeah. Maybe not.

Those moments are unavoidable, Biden says. But he goes on to say:

“There will come a day — I promise you — when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen.”

And I believe him, because I can feel it begin to happen. Little by little. Bit by bit. For now there is still plenty of pain, plenty of those “ambush” moments, but I can feel pain loosening its grip just a little.

Grief is a bully, and like all bullies it finds ways to sneak up on you when you least expect it. But there are ways of beating bullies if you keep at it.

When I was in grammar school and Roger Remus bullied me each day, Mom and Dad gave me advice on how to deal with him. They both agreed that hiding or running from Roger was not the best option, but they differed on what path I should take.

“Make him your friend,” Mom said. “Bullies don’t beat up on their friends.”

Dad had a different opinion about it. “Kick him in the balls,” he said.

I took Dad’s advice first, and after Roger beat the hell out of me, Mom’s advice gradually kicked in. By the time we went to high school, Roger came to respect me for standing up to him regardless of the pain it might cost me, and he no longer bullied me. Neither did anybody else, because anyone who wanted to beat the hell out of me would also have to deal with my friend Roger.

I think my relationship with the grief of Gail’s death will go the same way, in time. But I won’t get there by running from it, or by hiding from it with pharmaceutical help.

I will embrace grief, turning it into a friend. And on days when that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll pick up my guitar or harmonica and kick grief in the balls.

And in time, each memory of Gail will bring a smile to my lips before it brings a tear to my eye.

It will happen.

I promise you.

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

---