When we were little our mom would make us special cakes to celebrate our birthday. My cakes were decorated in the shape of Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh and Raggedy Ann and Andy.  They were usually adorned with M&M’s and licorice.  I have no memory of how the cakes tasted.  I only remember how special they made me feel.

Every year for our birthday our mom would host a party with our family, our Godparents and our friends who lived in the neighborhood.  When I think back to those days I can still feel the excitement and anxious anticipation of having everyone over to celebrate.  It was the best day of the year, the one day in which it was all about ME.   When there are six people in a family and you are a middle child, these days are a gift in themselves.

On one particular birthday our gluttonous Cocker Spaniel hopped upon to the dining room table and ate the corner of my specially made cake.  We discovered the missing corner and then found Benji covered in frosting. None of our guests had any clue there was an issue with the cake, because my mom filled the missing corner with frosting and served pieces from the other side.   There weren't any complaints of anyone pulling dog hair from their teeth, so no one was the wiser.

On my 16th birthday party my parents wheeled around my birthday present on two wheels and not four, and I’m pretty sure my face conveyed what my spirit felt, utter disappointment there was no car for me in my immediate future. 

I remember slumber parties with my friends.  I also recall at one particular party my brother gave me his gift in front of my middle school friends, my very own fishing pole and tackle box. I loved to fish, but I was embarrassed my ‘cool’ friends now knew it.  I also remember when he hosted a surprise slumber party for me and all my girlfriends in his small apartment.   I always knew he was a great salesman, but convincing parents to let their teenage daughters stay the night at my 25 year old brother’s apartment required some serious salesmanship.

I have so many memories of my birthdays growing up, all because of my mom.  She created a special feeling towards our birthdays, and continued to do so as we grew older.  She was always the first one to ask “What are you doing for Ryanne’s birthday or when are you having Austin’s party.”

Yesterday, I shared a little bit about how grief impacted my family.  Today I will share the catalyst for that blog, my interview with my husband.   

Jill:  The past several years have been tough, really tough, with me losing both my parents.  I’ve written a lot about my grief and how it felt from my perspective.  Can you share what it’s been like as a spouse of someone who’s suffering from grief?  I don’t think people think about the spouse that much in these circumstances.  I mean, it was hard for our relationship, right?  It was a challenge for a while.

Ryan:  I think there was a paradigm shift that occurs, or at least occurred for me, in which I realized this is not something which can be solved or fixed.

Jill:  You mean, you can’t make me feel better?

Ryan:  Yes.  If my inclination is to try and fix the situation because I care so much about you and I see that you’re hurting, then my first reaction would have been ‘What can I do to not make you not hurt or to take this away either through distraction or doing SOMETHING.’

There’s a need to solve or fix the issue, but there is a realization that not only is that probably impossible to do, but really counterproductive.  Your need is instead to be heard, be listened to, and to have someone to empathize with you.

If you talk to me it’s not because you are asking me to take care of the situation.  It’s because you’re feeling incredibly deep and sometimes paralyzing emotions.  It’s my role to listen and to hear what you are saying.  It’s not my place to take that on and say ‘Okay. Now Jill is expecting me to remedy this somehow.’

Jill:  I think the hardest thing for me was wanting to feel understood, but it’s impossible for someone from the outside to truly understand.  Therefore, the feeling is even more alienating, even as a couple.  You are closer to me than anybody and I share everything with you.  Grief is alienating, because there’s no way possible for you to understand.  Yet, that was what I desired the most.

Ryan:  Because I haven’t lost a parent, I don’t have a good frame of reference on grief.  It was difficult to not only realize I can’t do anything to help, but to know I’m not sure I can entirely understand it.  It was difficult not only to know that you are hurting, but also to feel very powerless as to what my role should be.

Jill:  I think in a really strong relationship each person takes care of one another to a certain degree.  Sometimes that is 60/40, sometimes it’s 50/50 and sometimes it’s 70/30. But here, it is completely one sided.  I needed to be taken care of, and I had no bandwidth whatsoever to take care of you at this point in time.  This went on for a long period of time.  Is that how it felt? 

Ryan:  Yes, but along with that is the realization this is unbalanced out of necessity.  Grief of that magnitude isn’t something you can easily compartmentalize or set aside.  My needs or my own feelings could not take precedent, nor did I expect it to.

Jill:  Rationally you can tell yourself that, but emotionally is that still the case?

Ryan:  That’s a good distinction.  You can tell yourself something rationally and at the same time emotionally you feel “Wait…what about me?”  So yes, there is that constant kind of battle to meet emotional needs while still thinking rationally.

Jill:  I’m glad we can talk about it now, because if you told at that time “I don’t think my needs are being met” it would have been really hard for me to hear.  I was just trying to swim and keep my head above water.

I can see how as a spouse of someone who’s grieving they might feel like they are getting lost.

Ryan:  Yeah, absolutely.  Just as it is emotionally isolating for someone like you in the depth of their grief, it can feel like that from the other side as well.  The bridge, the connection, was really energy driven in one direction.  All the excess capacity is being taken up by this moment to moment, dad to day survival of sorts.  There’s still a constant battle what you know rationally, what you feel emotionally and trying to reconcile those two things.

Jill:  I went to therapy to help me work through my grief, and then I encouraged you to go to therapy to see if there were ways we could work through the grief together.  Was that helpful?

Ryan:  Yes, it was.   A lot of it came down to me finding an outlet to express my frustrations.  It wasn’t with you or with your grief or anything other than feeling I was unable to connect, unable to help, unable to empathize, unable to know how to best help.  Those are all things that would be really really difficult for me to discuss with you. 

Jill:  Do you have any advice for other spouses who are trying to support their loved ones through the grieving process? 

Ryan:  I found therapy to be very helpful.  I think if I can stereotype for a minute, I think men tend to be fixers.  We see something that is not right or broken or our wife is sad and we think ‘Alright. I’m going to step in here like I would fix a leaky faucet.’  With grief it is not something that can be fixed. As hard as we try and as much as we want to, there is not an easy way to make everything right or take away this pain.  In many ways it kind of goes against our instinct, or my instinct at least, to want to take care of everything.
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I guess my advice would be to assess the situation and determine if your spouse is just asking for a willing ear, some comfort and some attempt to empathize rather than a plea for you to make everything better.

I’ve shared a lot on my blog about my personal journey with grief.  Never have I shared the impact my grief had on my family.  I would be lying if I said it had no impact whatsoever.   

In most healthy relationships there is a balance of give and take.  You give love; you get love.  There’s equal sharing of support and care.  With grief, there is a shift and the relationship becomes imbalanced.  This is justifiable and understandable.  Nonetheless, it can be a challenge for our loved ones who are sidelined while we work through a very personal struggle.

My family experienced the impact of my grief physically, financially and emotionally.

After my dad passed away I couldn’t bear to be embraced or hugged from anyone, especially my husband and children.  Six years later this is difficult and painful for me to write.

I couldn’t understand it at the time, since I am someone who will not hesitate to embrace a complete stranger.  Grief is an isolating emotion, and this response to my loved ones perpetuated my feelings of shame and isolation.  When I shared all of this with my therapist she said. “It’s because they are not your dad, and your daddy’s hug is the only thing you want.”  With that understanding, in time, I was able to work through these feelings and once again crave my family’s embrace.

Death reminds us of the limited amount of time we have on this earth.  For me, my grief created a personal quest to find ‘my purpose’.  I left a full time job to pursue passions that lived closer to my heart.   My husband was not only gracious and generous with my selfish quest, he was encouraging.  He was supportive even though this meant he absorbed the bulk of our family’s financial responsibility. 

What was supposed to be a transitory adjustment for me, turned into a far longer time frame than he and I had anticipated.   We hadn’t anticipated my mom would be diagnosed with terminal cancer only 17 months after my dad passed away.  We also hadn’t anticipated the three months of me taking care of my mom would turn into 22 months.  We hadn’t anticipated the brief sabbatical from the business I had recently started would turn into a permanent dissolution.

For approximately three years I did not contribute any income to our family, and yet my husband remained gracious and patient.  I am sure there were questions and concerns he felt, but because of my fragile state I believe it was difficult for him to clearly express his feelings.

When my mom passed away I had been suffering from grief for more than three years, and it had become somewhat debilitating.  I was able to manage my daily tasks, but I was a hollow shell just crossing the easy stuff off my list. 

I couldn’t clearly convey to my family how the grief from my father took me down at the knees, and now the death of my mother took the floor out from under me.  I felt as though I was living in quicksand.  All my energy was expended to survive each day and provide for my family’s basic needs.  Every day I exhausted immeasurable amount of effort trying to find the hope that was lost the day my mom took her last breath.

I can’t say for certain how my loved ones felt when I had experienced loss for a second time.  There was a big part of me that believed they were done.  “Alright already.  It’s been three years and we are ready for the old Jill to return.” 

The thing about losing two parents back to back, it’s not like the grieving you experience the first time leaves you better able to handle the second death.  First of all, the relationship with each parent is different, therefore the experience with grief is different.  Secondly, you are already severely handicapped from the loss of the first parent, so you only have half your tools to heal the second time around.  Lastly, my parents were my home.  No matter where they lived, where I lived or what I was going through, they were my home.  They were my place to return when I needed to feel grounded, feel safe and feel loved.  With both parents gone, my home was lost. 

I needed my parents to help me with my grief, but they couldn’t.  I needed my husband and my kids to help me with my grief, but they couldn’t.  My family needed me to be me, but I couldn’t.

For this, they had to live without the real Jill for a little while, until she could finally return to them scarred and battered.  They needed a level of patience unfathomable to me.  When I think about how frustrated I felt they didn’t understand what I was going through, I am reminded how little I understood what they were going through. 

I don’t regret the decisions I made.  I would do it all again in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t negate the fact the situation was hard on everyone, including my family.

Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love is empathetic.   Love is family.   For my husband, I will be forever grateful the way he has taken care of Austin, Ryanne and I.  Because of him I was able to take the time I needed to spend with my mom, and then heal from my grief after both my parents were gone.  For my kids, I am grateful they gave me hope, so I could dig my way out of the quicksand. 

Tomorrow I will share a special interview I had with my husband in which I learned a little more about his experience sitting on the sidelines while I struggled with my grief.

To my husband and my kids, I will honor your patience and love by continuing to live my life with purpose.