Navigating Grief – a Prologue
Stephen McPeek
As I lay in bed reading Time Magazine’s interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg titled “Life After Death,” a riveting introduction to Sandberg’s book “Option B - Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy” which she wrote after the sudden and painful death of her beloved husband, I thought about my Aunt Leota who will lay Uncle Dick to rest this Thursday. Everything in me reverberates when I read an article like this and the all too familiar emotions climb up to my throat. It is a strange mixture of peace and pain, unknown and familiar, valley and mountaintop all wrapped up in one. I feel like know Sheryl, like we could sit together to share personal lessons of grief with one another and with the world.
One does not choose grief and loss to be a major life topic. The topic chooses you. It stirs you, turns you inside out, kicks you in the gut, and embraces you warmly, and it changes you again and again and again.
So many people I know are dying or losing loved ones. All around us there is death in the news – tragic deaths in Syria, Sweden, Iraq, Germany, Egypt. The thought of the collective grief and loss of a community when many people have been killed at the same time is overwhelming and almost unfathomable. How do people survive such loss?
Phil Deutsch, a close friend of Sheryl Sandberg and her husband Dave Goldberg, describes the way he experienced Sheryl in the hospital as follows: “The wails of her crying in that hospital were unlike anything that I’d ever heard in my life. It was an awful, awful scene.” Whether you are a person of great wealth like Sandberg, or a person of great poverty like many of those losing loved ones in Syria, the pain of grief and loss is the same. It is awful and terrible and like Sandberg describes, “When I lost my husband, I lost my bearings.” How do you find your bearings after you have lost them?
The date of my Uncle’s funeral, April 20th, marks the 11th year of the death of my dear wife Anuhea. Things have gotten better although the word APRIL is enough to throw my soul off balance. Like Sandberg, I lost my bearings and for a long time, I wandered through the wilderness and tried to live as best as I could, mostly motivated by the necessity of caring for a child. I have done my “Trauerarbeit” – my work of grieving. The pain is no longer acute like it was for a few years after her death. There is peace and there are many deep lessons of the soul that have emerged. And yet, the tears are always right under the surface of my skin. And I feel very close to those who are in their process of coming to grips with the only certainty on earth: everyone will die.
What lesson can I share for today?
None…The lessons of my soul are my lessons. All I haveto share are my experiences and thoughts, and my warm caring arms to those in need of a silent but understanding embrace. When I see that look in your eyes, you will also see the look in my eyes and without a single word, we know.
Navigating Grief: Part I
"The power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted. The act of grieving, according to Freud, involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life. It never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment." Joan Didion
As a child, I never thought about death at all. My great-grandparents were alive, my grandparents were all alive and vibrant. It wasn't until Anuhea was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in stage 3B (after an initial misdiagnosis) at age 39 that I began to look death in the face. Since then, we, as a family, have become acquainted with the valley of the shadow of death. Six months before Anuhea died, my Mom's brother, Uncle Jimmy died. Then Anuhea died, then my Mom was diagnosed with colon cancer, then my Grandma passed away followed by Grandpa six months later. Five deaths in 4 years – the loss of 4 pillars of our family. It was an intense phase of our lives.
"People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I now notice it on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the optometrist' office into the bright daylight with disabled eyes..." (From "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, a book my Aunty gave me after Anuhea's death.)
Yes, I know this look and I know the valley. It has forever changed me, made me more sensitive, taken away my fear of death, softened my hardness, forced me into vulnerability, helped me give up my control.
The first time Anuhea was diagnosed, I went through a rough time trying to understand. I questioned God, fell into self-pity, struggled. We were so young, we were starting over again, I had 2 out of control teenagers, a toddler, a new restaurant, and a very sick wife. Anuhea fought like a bear to survive. She wanted desperately for Michelangelo, who was only two at the time, to grow up with memories of his Mom. Because she lost both of her parents at a young age, she knew what it was like to struggle for memories.
Before Christmas in 1998, it became obvious that something was wrong so I pleaded with her to see another doctor. She did and they had her in surgery THE NEXT DAY. That little lump that she and her doctor first felt had become a tumor that was 10 centimeters long. The tumor was removed and proved to be malignant. After the diagnosis, the long haul of treatment began. Anuhea determined to be the one making the decisions. She wouldn't even let me help decide because she didn't want me to blame myself if things went downhill.Anuhea decided to use the best of nature and the best of medicine in her attempt to win over this cancer. She started drinking a Hawaiian medicinal juice called Noni that my sister began sending her. The initial chemotherapy commenced. After it was over, she opted to have both breasts removed even though the cancer was in one breast.
I loved her breasts. I remember vividly the night before the operation. We went away to be alone and to enjoy her breasts for one last time. We both cried as we surrendered to the Lord. The next day they were gone, forever gone. She was so brave...
The diagnosis was once again not good. Even after removing the breasts more cancer was found. Her stem cells were isolated and frozen and high dose chemotherapy was administered - 5 times stronger than chemo. It drove her to the edge of death and she slept for days and we waited. Her bone marrow was killed by the chemo. According to plan her stem cells were reinjected and her bone marrow came to life again. After all of this came reconstructive surgery.
It was a long haul, I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
After Anuhea gained enough strength, she returned to Hawaii to select her Hawaiian Homes land. After arriving in Hawaii she decided that she would not return to Colorado. She was afraid to die away from home. The doctor’s prognosis was not good. Her chances of surviving past 5 years were slim. And so I walked through another valley of loss and decided that family was more important to me than things. I was working hard at our Hawaiian restaurant, "Hawaii's Best" and we owned a beautiful big house in Colorado Springs. After all we had been through I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from my family so I made the decision to close the restaurant at a huge financial loss, and sell the house at no profit. I called my Dad to let him know we were moving home and he was quiet. I said, "Dad, do you not want us to move home?" He answered, "I don't want you to live in poverty." I was stunned by his answer but he knew the economic situation in Hawaii and knew we would struggle for a long time if we came home with nothing. And we did...That's another chapter.
Through the next years, life was a struggle indeed. The side effects of the cancer treatment that are so vividly explained to you before you place your signature on the dotted line to release the hospital from all liability kicked in one after the other - memory loss, failure of organs and function, compromised immune system. There was always something. When Anuhea would feel up to it finally, she would begin to work. Inevitably she would quit because of physical complications. One of the worst complications came with her hips. She began having excruciating pain in her legs. She went to a number of doctors on the Big Island but none of them could diagnose the problem. Finally, she was told it was in her head and she should just take pain medication. She begged me to believe her that her pain was real and she asked me to move her to Honolulu where we could find help. So again, we moved and suffered loss...It was diagnosed that both hips were totally deteriorated and had to be replaced. Two more operations, more pain, more suffering. But then relief.
After she healed she got a great job as an event planner at Paradise Cove. Her first event was a huge NFL party and she did a great job. The next week, the company scheduled a random drug test for her. Due to memory loss from the chemo, she forgot. When she remembered, she thought, "I will go tomorrow since I am off that day." When she returned to work, she was told, "You're fired. You didn't show up for the drug test and in our books that means you are positive." Without a word, she packed her things and left. This was only one of a string of such incidents, all related to the cancer battle.
When we were in the midst of such scenes, we were too close to the situation to recognize the link. We were caught in the quagmire of life and could not even see clearly.
After the medical treatment was finished, we moved back to Hilo where I got my job back as the coordinator for the Hawaii County Resource Center, a new service that I had helped to set up for the island. We found a cute little cottage in a beautiful place, Anuhea got a job at the college and it seemed like everything would finally be good, finally...
One day she began spotting. She made a joke about it and said we would now be able to have another child. She called our family doctor in Honolulu and made this joke to him. He told her, "Mrs. McPeek, that is not funny. You need to get in to see a gynecologist immediately. "
She went to see her gynecologist who didn't detect anything major except that something was not in order with her blood work. He referred her to a heart/lung specialist who detected that her lungs were covered with something and he initially diagnosed it as pulmonary fibrosis. We were relieved that he didn't use the "c" word but as soon as we could get on the Internet, we realized that even that was not a good diagnosis. He was uneasy with it and requested her records. As soon as he read her history, he referred her to an oncologist.
We went to see the oncologist and took one look at the reports and without even running any tests, he looked at us and said, "I am sorry, it's the cancer."
Navigating Grief: Part II - Anuhea's Final Days
After the blow given us by the oncologist, we went home and immediately Anuhea called the mortuary. I was shocked. I said to her, "Sweetheart - that is so fast. What if it is not the cancer." I was surprised that the oncologist had given us this announcement without any tests to confirm it. From that moment, Anuhea began to plan her last days including her funeral. I went back to the oncologist to protest his speedy announcement. He was apologetic but told me it was pretty certain.
I asked Anuhea to get a second opinion because I couldn't live with the thought of her dying and then finding out it was not cancer. Out of love for me, she went to another oncologist only to get the firm diagnosis that it was indeed a recurrence of the cancer, this time in her lungs. After the diagnosis, she looked at me with weary eyes and said, "Can I rest now?"
Anuhea told me that a couple of months before the diagnosis, she had had the impression from the Lord that her days were numbered as if He were saying - "your time will come much quicker than you would like."
During the next 6 weeks, even as her breathing became more difficult, she was very busy. She wrote to people asking for forgiveness for things she had done to hurt them, she sought God, read about heaven in a book a dear friend sent to her, she called people. Many came to visit her and ended up crying because of her strength and faith. Her foster Mom would come over and crawl into bed with her and cuddle with her.
She was determined to leave memories for the kids. One day she said to the girls - let's go out in the yard, take our tops off, and take pictures. I was stunned and said, "Only you would do something like that when you are dying!" They went out and took the most beautiful, emotional pictures you can imagine. She then took those pictures and began scrapbooking for the kids. She spent time with each one of them assuring them of her love for each one. She made little wooden treasure boxes for Michelangelo and filled them with handwritten love notes. She had little Teddy Bears made for each child and recorded the song that she used to sing to each one of them when they were small kids. Michel still sleeps with his bear and pushes the sing button so he can hear his Mom. She had necklaces made for them with an etched picture of herself. She then recorded herself speaking to each one of us and letting us know of her love and her thoughts for our futures. On the night before she died, she finished her scrapbooking page for me.
That night I went to her and wanted to tuck her in. I had given her a crystal butterfly for her last birthday that was always next to her bed. It was a symbol of what was happening in her life. I reached over to tuck her in and knocked the butterfly over and it shattered. I was shocked and began to freak out. She said gently, "Steve, it's just a thing." Somehow in my spirit, I felt there was a deeper significance to it. She asked me, "Do I have to go to bed now?" I encouraged her saying it was already late. After tucking her in, I went to bed. Little did I know that the next day the butterfly would fly.
When I woke up in the morning, her sheets were disheveled and her oxygen tube was on the floor. She was half on and half off the bed. She was barely conscious. I worked hard to stabilize her and had a feeling that this was the beginning of the end. Up until that point, she had done everything for herself - showered, went to the bathroom, ate, everything. From that morning on, she didn't get up again.
I called the children and told them they should say goodbye to Anuhea. Somehow, I just knew that this was the end. As you can imagine, it was heartbreaking to watch them go to her bed and kiss her. It still breaks my heart when I think of it. The kids stayed in the living room while I stayed next to her bed. At one point, she looked at me with an intense glance and said, "We need to talk." I thought, "Oh, no - what did I do that I haven't confessed yet?" She didn't say anything more. A couple of hours later I asked her what we needed to talk about and she answered, "I need to know what happened last night." And that was it. Perhaps there was a spiritual battle going on over her life in the night, I will never know.
At noon she was unconscious and never really woke up after that. I stayed by her side on my knees. I had a picture in my mind where I was on my knees lifting her limp body upwards to the Lord and he came and lifted her from my arms. This picture helped me in those last 3 hours. Towards to end when her breathing became belabored, I kept encouraging her to go to the Lord. At 3:20 pm, she died. Watching her suffocate to death was one of the most traumatic moments in my life.
It was rough, really rough. And yet, we were so blessed because she was a true champion in the way she finished the race. I don't know where she got the energy to do all she did. We had a chance to walk her to the edge of eternity in a way that many people never experience. Nothing makes the death of a spouse or parent easy, but it was a blessed time. We were so near to heaven in those weeks.