To Speak of Grieving and Ungrieving

Over four years ago, my husband (then just 43) was diagnosed with stage two kidney cancer. Jason had a significant surgery to remove the kidney and surrounding tissues and then was told there was an 80% chance it wouldn’t come back. If it did come back, it would probably be elsewhere in his body and then we would talk about how long they could stretch his life with other treatments.  

Sometime between discovery of the tumor and the surgery to remove it, Jason and I were out for dinner on what was then a rare date-night opportunity. “Do you have a piece of paper?” he asked me.  

I dug out a small notebook from my purse and handed him a pen as well. He sketched something on the first page and handed it back to me.  

“That’s what I want my tombstone to look like if this is it.”  

I took the piece of paper, looked at it, and thought about what to do. I’m proud to say in that moment I didn’t make it about me. I didn’t tell him what was going through my mind every second of every day then—fears of being alone forever, anger that this was happening to me also, terror at the thought of being a widow and a single mom.  

Instead, I took the piece of paper and honored where he was in that moment. “Can you help me understand what you’ve drawn here? I want to understand your wishes.” 

In our time together as a couple, we had already talked briefly about our thoughts on funerals—the church hymns I hate and would never want played, his desire for some part of the service to be in our home. Soon after this dinnertime moment, we would spend a surreal hour in a hospital office writing out our advanced directives, making jokes as we do in tough times and holding hands more than usual. I know talking about the tombstone was important to him. Faced with our own mortality, I think we all begin to imagine how people will remember or view us after we are gone. 

Years later, he is still with me. And so is the piece of paper. 

I keep it in my purse and when I go to write a note to myself, I see it. I don’t keep it because I need the information on it. In fact, he told me later he’d changed his mind about what he’d want. 

I keep the piece of paper because it reminds me how profoundly important Jason is to me. It reminds me of the feelings of desolation I had when we weren’t sure if this was it. It takes me back to the mornings I stood in the shower, hoping the noise of the water would somehow muffle my wails and sobs so he and my boys didn’t have to hear them, as I faced a possible future without him. 

I keep the piece of paper because of a Buddhist saying a former colleague told me once. It comes in different forms, but the essence of it is simple: “The glass you admire is already broken. Enjoy the glass.”  

As the colleague explained it to me, the idea is that all things end, all people die, all items break. Remembering that inherent within them is their own demise helps us truly appreciate them. 

Sometimes a thought about the piece of paper with Jason’s sketch on it will come to me. It has become for me a precious reminder to treasure him. It is a part of my pre-grieving, my anticipatory grief, my working through of feelings that can’t ever be fully worked through. I know I may die before he does. I grieve that too.  

Sometimes I think we are people of grief—that we spend so much more time mourning loss than we ever admit. We grieve before we lose, we worry that we are grieving wrong or not enough or too much, or we avoid it all, usually to our own and others’ detriment.  

Take parenting. Each stage of a child’s life brings new losses to those who love them. An adult misses the toothless grin of the newborn when the first tooth arrives or the loss of the baby babble when words are formed. Someone may mourn the loss of the ready hug, the clinging, all the way through the dependence of not being able to drive. Eventually, a parent mourns that the child no longer lives full time at home.  

Jason latched on to the Andy Bernard line from The Office right away, the one that resonated with many viewers: “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” Jason mentions it every time I complain about anything related to our kids or my life. “Just remember,” he says to me. “These are the good old days.”  

I’ve now learned to say it to myself—at work, at home. I think of it in relation to Jason in the restaurant handing me that piece of paper in the small notebook. His very presence in that moment was a gift I was never guaranteed to have. I was never guaranteed to have this moment now, as I sit writing in the living room, and he sleeps in our bedroom.  

Jason reminded me once that he sometimes reflects on how grief or loss isn’t the surprise. Life is the surprise. In a cosmic sense, in a holistic sense, we deal with so much loss—of friends and loved ones, stages of our lives, opportunities—that the real surprise is the presence, not the absence. 

I told someone once about the drawing of the tombstone. They didn’t take the story the way I intended it. They looked at me as if I were disturbed and needed help. They even suggested I get some counseling. I assured them that Jason and I have both had counseling over his diagnosis and our subsequent journey. It wasn’t my first time in counseling and probably won’t be the last.  

Their reaction reminded me that lots of people don’t want to talk about grief. They don’t want to talk about loss. They think we should get over it or not focus on it. I think they’re missing out. A brief reminder of Jason’s mortality helps me remember to treasure him for days. I wouldn’t give that gift away for anything.  

This kind of grieving is nothing like what I experienced when my dad died. I don’t miss my dad. We had a challenging relationship and we were estranged for four years—a necessary separation that allowed me to determine who I was. What connects the strange “ungrieving” I experienced when my dad died to the pre-grieving I experienced when Jason had cancer is that lots of people don’t want to talk about either one.  

But I know we need to. I needed to. I still do. Part of my purpose in publishing Ungrieving: A Memoir of Emotional Abuse, Loss, and Relief later this year is to encourage more conversations about different forms of grief. We don’t talk enough about the loss of beloved loved ones, for sure, but we definitely don’t talk enough about pre-grieving. And I rarely hear anyone speak about the feeling of relief I experienced when my dad died.  

In my memoir, I explore the reality that I don’t miss my dad—most of the time—and that’s still a form of grief, a form I refer to as ungrieving. Over the years of writing my journey, I’ve encountered lots of people who feel the same about a family member or close friend, someone whose emotional abuse of them made their death or estrangement equal parts relief and confusion. Those whispered confessions to me deserve to be spoken aloud and processed together. I hope by speaking my story aloud, others will feel empowered to do the same.  

In a larger sense, Jason’s drawing is a reminder to me to talk more about pain and loss of all kinds, not in quiet whispers or with shame when our grief lasts too long or we don’t actually feel grief at a loss. Instead, I will speak aloud in public, in print, and call for others to do the same. That open conversation is our way to healing.