When the therapist becomes a widow, what happens next? Who will be the one to support them? Can they support themselves? Jessica Zoeller, a therapist, candidly shares how she handled this very situation after the death of her husband. She recounts their whirlwind romance, the challenges of relocating and building a family, and the devastating impact of his cancer diagnosis. Jessica opens up about the emotional turmoil of caregiving, the importance of finding support during grief, and her inspiring mission to help other young widows. She also reflects on navigating life after loss, finding a new purpose, and prioritizing her children’s happiness.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World

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Watch the episode here

 

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Widowhood Through A Therapist’s Lens With Jessica Zoeller

Jessica, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me.

When we first had the concept of this four-part discussion, what did you think about that?

I was excited and nervous. I’ve not done anything like this extended talking about grief other than like therapy. It’s interesting to talk about all of these different concepts. I love it. I think it’s important and it’s interesting the next couple of steps that we’ll be taking after this.

Importance Of Letting Go Of Grief To Live Your Life

The idea of it is important. Someone that is reading and they’re telling themselves, “I need to stop listening this stuff about grief and just live my life.”

 

 

What does that mean? I don’t know what that means. There’s no living light. When you have grief at this level, there’s no going forward without also embracing your grief. It has to be a part of you. It has to live with you always. You just have to figure out how you’re living with it.

 

How Jessica Met Her Husband Jerry

It is. Jessica, how did you meet your husband?

Which one?

How did you meet Jerry? Let me go with that.

I met Jerry online back when OkCupid was not a hookup site. I don’t think it was then.

That’s the website you met him on?

Yes, it was called OkCupid and now it’s transitioned to bit more of like a Grindr hookup kind of website. I’m not sure, but we met online. I saw that he was a fan of the movie Moulin Rouge. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. I’m a big musical theater person and I loved that movie. I was like yes, but then he said he was a UC Bearcats fan. I made the first move. I sent him a message that said, “I saw that you like Moulin Rouge but we can never talk again because you’re a UC Bearcats fan and I’m a UK fan.” It all started there.

What are those UK? What does that mean?

UC is the school in our area, University of Cincinnati and UK is University of Kentucky. I’m from Kentucky. I’m a Kentucky girl and he’s in Ohio boy. Even though I live in Ohio now. I was born and raised there.

Aren’t you cheating?

No, circumstances of work have brought us here or had brought us here. We were both working in this area and we’re like, there’s no reason to be commuting that much to work.

You hook up online. How does this turn into or how long before it turns into a real person connection?

I don’t know how I should go to this whole story but I what I will say.

I’m sorry, the title of this is called Widowhood Real Talk with Tina and this is for adults only. If you’re not for adult conversation, I ask you to leave the room.

That’s fair. In all honesty, he and I were talking for about 2 or 3 weeks. We were talking about meeting for the first time. I was very much into him. I liked him a lot but there was a boy who I had a thing for a long time ago. I was at a party and I kissed him while I was still talking to Jerry. I felt so guilty about it and I ghosted him.

How old were we at this point?

I was young. I was 21 still or I had just turned 22. I was young and stupid. I was at a party for my friend’s going away to the army. I had a lot of emotions.

You met Jerry at what age?

I met Jerry at 22.

You met Jerry online and then it turned into a real person connection.

Yes.

 

 

I thought you knew him when you were young and then you guys reconnected.

No. This is a totally different person. I made out with him at a party. Felt super guilty and stopped talking to Jerry and then I realized how much I viscerally missed him and I got back online. I sent him an apology and said, “I’m so sorry. I made a lot of mistakes.” I don’t even know that I told him the full story until years and years of us dating and being married.

I told him eventually like, “This is what happened. I was misled in my emotions at the time. That party was for my best friend at the time going to the army. There are a lot of mixed emotions about my best friend going into the army. This boy who I used to like kissed me and I didn’t know what to feel.” If I had done that, then should I have been messaging Jerry. I ghosted him and missed the crud out of him. Sent him an apology and he was nice enough to listen to me and we got together for our first date like 2 or 3 weeks after that.

Is your friend still in the army? What happened to the career? I have to ask about the important part of the conversation. Your friend in the military, did she stay in or what does he do?

He went into the army. He was in Afghanistan. He’s home now, married, have three kids and living life.

You and Jerry extends the olive branch and says, you may enter.

I look back at that time a lot now with everything that’s happening and go like, I was this close to this never happening. It’s this weird bizarre thing but he was kind enough to give me a second chance and then life to cold and everything unfolded from there.

Isn’t it interesting how one decision can change our life? You could have chosen to keep ghosting to him and never reconnect and that version of your life would have never existed.

I can’t imagine that because my baby’s wouldn’t be here. That is the one thing. I love Jerry. I just said that to his mom. I called her to check on her because it was the anniversary of his death. I said, “I hope that I loved your son, probably more than I loved myself at certain points.” I would never trade that for anything but it is tempting when you think of everything that you go through in widowhood. That one little choice to reach out and for him to extend the olive branch was what led to all the things after. My babies that are here are worth every heartache.

What was that first date like that you guys had to reconnected? I’m here for all the tea.

He was a big baseball fan. We went to Kentucky and met on this place called the Levy where there’s a bunch of stores and stuff. We walked across the bridge and watched a Reds game. What I remember from it is, I don’t know who played. I don’t know what the score was or who won or lost. I just remember talking to him constantly. I’m a tall girl. I’m 5’10. I’m curvy. I’m way curvier now. In my experience, some men are off put by that.

They’re scared. They are afraid and intimidated. Those are the worst to you.

He was this 6’5 guy. Big tall dude who made me feel safe. We just talked constantly. We walked back across the bridge to the levy area and there’s a bench that overlooks the city of Cincinnati. Very romantic. We sit on the bench and we’re talking a little bit more. You can tell he wants to make a move. I swear, it’s like out of a book. I look up in the sky and a single raindrop falls directly into my eyeball and I’m like, “Oh my God. I’m blind.” I remember him going like, “Let me see.” He put my hand down and kissed me.

I saw that come from the eye line. When you said, “Let me see.” I was like, “Okay, Jerry. I see how you doing this.”

That was our first date. I remember going home and I turned to my mom and said, “I’m going to marry that boy.”

Right away you were in for, “This is it.”

I just had a feeling and I went with it.

How long did you guys date before a proposal of marriage was made?

He proposed at month eight but I knew I was getting engaged at month two. Maybe it was a little bit more than month 2, month 3 or 4. I introduced him to my family at a wedding for the first time. My grandfather loved him. It was just like talk and talk. We go home to where I was living at the time with my friends and he says, “I have talked to you about something.” I was like, “Oh god. That’s never a good sign in a relationship.”

A guy wants to talk.

He was working for BestBuy. He had gotten a degree in IT Business Management and he says, “I’ve been recruited by the FBI and they are starting to do the process of getting me a job with the FBI.” I think he’s messing with me a little bit. I’m like, “Okay.” He’s like, “I know you want to stay here. Everyone is here. Your family and your friends. This will require me to probably move pretty far away.” I was like, “Okay.” He said, “You have basically some decisions to make,” and I was like, “Alright.” It was you there we would get very committed pretty fast or we would end the relationship. I had never been with anybody before Jerry. He was my one and only at the time.

Let’s break that down. Jerry got the V part, is what you’re saying. Was that night when he said this?

It had happened probably a couple of weeks right before all this happened. He didn’t know about it at the time. For me, on a religious level, when I was more religious, that meant that’s who I’m going to marry. All of a sudden, it was like, “We’ve gotten to this point and we’re getting married.” That’s how it all happens. I committed on almost like an engagement level at 3 or 4 months and then got the ring a few months later, which he took me to the bench that we had our first date on. He was tying his shoe and then got down on one knee and proposed to me.

I know. It’s so cheesy but it was legit because I was like a Rom-Com girl. I can’t say as much now but I was all about romantic TV love. It felt like so much of our story was that and then all of the sudden, this FBI thing like drove a truck right through that idea because I thought we would make a life for ourselves in Kentucky or Cincinnati. When he started that process, it took like a year and a half. I’m probably skipping some steps here with you, but we found out right before we got married that he would be getting a job in Washington, DC. We were on shaky ground of what would be our future for the majority of our engagement while trying to put a wedding together. I was graduating college.

Living in DC is a different field than what you were accustomed to.

Where we ended up living, we were in Fredericksburg originally. Very country which is what I’m used to and I liked that a lot. Even when we moved up to Woodbridge.

That’s getting a little bit tighter, though, there. I’m familiar with that area. That’s getting closer to DC, Woodbridge. Fredericksburg is more a little bit further away. He had a longer commute because you were still in Virginia, but when you get into Woodbridge, you can, is a slugging like they get a different bus stops and then they’ll slug in to?

They can. He’s still doing the train, so he would drive to the train station every morning. It took an hour and a half commute to Fredericksburg and then an hour and a half commute back, if I remember correctly. Woodbridge was closer to like 45 minutes. That made the morning is way about her for him and we also had a child at that point. I know I’m jumping.

I know then you took me there. He proposes and this job opportunity, and taking us away from family. Was there any doubt like, do I still want to marry him, thinking about what you were about to sacrifice for this relationship?

Yes, there were. I would say throughout the entire relationship. In fact, in DC, one of our number one fights was like, “We’re here. It’s just us.” One of those things that you look back with a lot of regret because at certain points in life, you’d go, “I would give anything just to be us again and back there and just the two of us fighting the world together.” I love my friends and my family, but there is a struggle constantly when you’re here to go do this and be here and do that. When it was just us, we lived our lives the way we wanted to.

It was beautiful in its own weird way and we got to know each other. We were each other’s best friends. Not in the sense like my husband is my best friend. Literally, we didn’t have anyone but each other, so you have to turn to that person but it also can increase the fights and stuff because it’s just the two of you.

Strong communication.

Very strong communication.

A Look Back: What The Wedding Day Was Like

What was the wedding like?

Very Catholic. He was an altar boy. I was part of Catholic retreats for years. We wanted to get married in the church. That was important to us. We did the standard church wedding at a Catholic church. We invited 250 people, so it was a big wedding. My mom was 1 of 8 kids and he’s 1 of 5. His mom is 1 of 5 and his dad was 1 of 4. There were a lot of people at our wedding.

How about you as far as sibling?

I have one brother. Overall, it was a big wedding and then we had our reception. This is a funny story. Our reception hall was down on the Ohio River. It was a quaint little place that you could go. You had to put everything together yourself. You had to arrange the caterer and the decorations and put that all together yourself. It flooded because the Ohio River flooded that year and it came up into the reception hall about that much space about a month before our wedding.

When did you two get married?

2011.

It was chaos, but it was fine at the end of the day. Everything worked out. It was a great little reception hall. We put off little lanterns. The ones that light up and put those. They went across the river. It was very picturesque and then there’s geese that land there this time of the year or not this time. I think a big group of them are there in general. There’s pictures of us walking with geese through a field and stuff. I painted it as like very fairy tale but there was the normal things that happened like your whole entire hall getting flooded by the river.

Were you hands on or did you have somebody doing these things for you?

I did everything. My mom makes fun of me now. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in 2nd grade. This organization has been like my life for the majority of my life until I got into my junior year of high school. I started organizing things and she said, “I have never seen anything like your wedding,” because I had picture diagrams of exactly how things should be set up on the hall. There were a different boxes that were organized in very specific ways in our living room. Everything was put together piece by piece.

It came in handy. It’s like, “We got to make this happen.”

Over time, it all came together. We had like fourteen months to plan. It was not like a last-minute thing, which was good. Over that fourteen-month period, that’s when he was being vetted and people were being questioned about the FBI journey. That’s when we got the, I think the notification was in May or April, that he would go to DC. We knew that going into our honeymoon and stuff like that. That was one of our big topics of conversation.

How soon after the wedding where you now relocating?

September. We got married in June and then relocated in September.

That’s stressful.

There were a lot of major changes superfast and it caused some stressors for sure.

Navigating Career Paths After Graduation

That’s real life. When you think about those stressors from the outside looking in, you’re moving away from family and friends. You just had a wedding. You’re just coming off of this high in the honeymoon and this feels like a lot of uncertainty going into a lot of unknown. You had graduated and now, you’re trying to find a job or what was that look like? He was already set. What did that look like for your career path?

I graduated in December and then we got married in June. I had embarrassingly taken the exam and failed it by two points to be an educator in the State of Kentucky. I was like, “I’m going to wait and then do my test again in Virginia,” because there’s different standards for what you have to meet with it. When we first went to Virginia, I didn’t have a job. I ended up getting a substitute teaching position through the County, Prince William County. I would go all over the area and do subbing. That’s how it started. It gets complicated from there.

Go with it. go ahead.

I ended up substitute teaching for months. I was not happy doing that. I wanted to do something real and something that was a permanent position but there was nothing that I could find. Perspective wise, we’re still recovering from the crash of 2008 when everyone loses their jobs and stuff like that. Recovering still in 2011 and I ended up saying, “Why don’t we try to get pregnant and have a baby?” we tried and I get pregnant unexpectedly immediately and very excited about it.

I started having some issues from the beginning. I had bleeding occasionally and that was very concerning. My mom facetimes me and tells me that she’s been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was going to have a lumpectomy and was going to happen in two days. I had to pack a bag, go to Kentucky and be with my mom for the surgery. I’m saying I needed to. Nobody told me I had to. I just felt like I needed to be there 100%.

In that process of the day that my mom had the lumpectomy, I started bleeding heavily. By the next day, I had a miscarriage. I was not in the best place mentally. Coming home, I had to tell him over the phone what happened. Many years later, I found out that was an issue for him that I had gone because we were having issues with the pregnancy already. He was upset that he wasn’t there and help out in that situation.

I came home deeply depressed. I think my anxiety got higher than it’s ever been. Out of nowhere, I get a message from my best friend from the army and he says, “They’re looking for an English teacher at the school I used to go to in Kentucky. Do you want to try and get this position?” I said to my husband, “I know we’re in Virginia. You said you wanted to be here for a year with the FBI and then you were going to try and get a job somewhere else. Do you want me to take this position? I can go do that while you put an application to try and get back home because the economy is starting to recover. Maybe we can get you back home while I have a job set up and we’re both making decent money.”

At the time, he said sure but I think it was to appease my mentally not-so right brain and trying to make things okay again. He said yes and we ended up living apart for ten months of the second year that we were married. It was crazy and then he never got a job. It just never happened. Nothing fell in his lap. At the end of my contract, I put my job and moved back to Virginia. We decided that we would try again but also, we wanted to be closer to the city. That’s when we moved from Fredericksburg to Woodbridge. It was technically, dump freeze because we were a apartment first then we moved into a townhome that we bought.

What was the importance of being closer to the city?

We had no time. He wouldn’t get home until like 6:30 and then he’d go to bed early because he would have to get on the train at 4:30. It was awful. We ended up going closer to that area but I also, at the exact same time, was offered a position at a, I want to say prestigious but it’s not like a big deal. It was a nice Catholic school that was in that area. There some very dominant Catholic schools and that was one of them.

I was offered probably the best job that I’ve ever had in my entire life there and then we move into the apartment. Probably a few months later, I end up getting pregnant with Jackson, my son. Life felt like it was coming to this pentacle. I had a great job. He had a great job. He was making more money at that point because he’d been there. It was GS or whatever is going up.

He and I were probably in the best place of our entire marriage while I was pregnant with my son and had little traditions like, I don’t know why. We watched Cops on Friday nights and ordered pizza. That was our thing. It’s such a random thing to do, but it’s what we did. We had little traditions that we would start and got as close as we could have gotten during that time.

What happened to your mom’s results?

My mom ended up doing the lumpectomy. We need to take the breast completely. She went with the lumpectomy and then did rounds of chemo and radiation and she has been in the clear for over ten years at this point.

Now, you guys are watching Cops and having pizza, the baby is born and all is well.

That year that we were apart, she was doing treatment. I was there to make sure.

You had the job. That worked out well to be close.

I was not in the best place making the decision but I also made the decision knowing I could be around my mom in case she needed me. In my mind, it would all line up to where we ended up getting when we went to Woodbridge, Virginia but nobody was around. We have that amazing time together. I got involved with the school. We would do like the prom and stuff and get involved with that and be chaperons together. It was a cool time in our relationship and then Jackson came along.

It was just as great but there were some difficulties when he was born. I was re-hospitalized with postpartum preeclampsia, where my blood pressure got to 220 over 180. They put me on magnesium. I wrote a death note in case something happened to me because my headaches were so bad from it. If Jackson cried, it would make me feel like my head was going to split in half. They couldn’t be there with me. It was just the two of them.

His parents had just left from visiting us and all the sudden, they are coming back. My mom’s taking a red-eye flight to Virginia or DC. That moment, we both realized we need to get home but also how. We both were in a good position with our jobs. Do we take having support over? It took a while. I think it took about almost a year before he founded a job with a company near. His friend had suggested it and he got the position.

That job was with the FBI agency or something different?

It’s a well-known company.

It was something probably industry. He left the Federal.

He went to industry and he did IT management again for them. Again, we were following his career and that ended up being something that was brought up a few times. Only a little bit. That was fun when I was in Virginia and I was doing the position. I was working with kids with special needs and who were dealing with diagnoses like ADHD in a private school. It’s very different with private school how things are done.

I was like their liaison to work with public schools, to get all of these things figured out and how to get them accommodations. In the process, I was like mental health but also, I dealt with postpartum depression and anxiety. More of a postpartum anxiety with my son. I was seeing a therapist and I was like, “I should be a therapist.” All of these things came together with the kids that I was working with and my own experience with mental health. I was like, “This is it. I want to do this for my master’s degree.” I started that when I was in Virginia online, so that I could continue to do that when we eventually went back home then I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to credit transfers and things like that.

We decided to go home and his parents very nicely invited us to live with them but it was at a precarious time in the United States with different things like elections. We had very different viewpoints on things at the time. There was a lot of contention for months that we lived with his parents. They were very generous to let us live with them but we had to wait for our townhouse to sell in Virginia and it took a while. The guy kept messing up his credit. We had one buyer that just took months to finally sell him the house.

At one point, we got frustrated with him and so he started renting our townhouse. We’re like, “He’s renting the townhouse. We’re getting income. Why don’t we just go buy another house here and then we can have our own space?” I get pregnant with my daughter, Kennedy at the time. That’s a thing and then, we ended up buying a house in the area and finally settling in. I got a job almost like a secretary in a mental health agency and I hated it. I asked to become a case manager who does case management all around the city.

Whist I learned a huge amount about the area, demographics, and culturally competent ways of working with people. It wasn’t therapy. I didn’t have a whole lot of direction of what I was doing. At the end of the day, I found another position in teaching. I went back to teaching because it was a very difficult situation. The person who was my boss, I don’t say this lightly. I think she had it out for me. It was a whole thing. I exited doing case management and went back to teaching for two years. In that two-year period, that’s when Jerry started having what we thought were gallbladder issues. Kennedy was born and he went to go get his gallbladder checked out. When they did the ultrasound, they saw spots on his liver.

Long-Distance Marriage: Insights And Advice

If I can pause, I want to circle back to a couple of things if that’s okay because that’s going to be a different ship. In a long-distance marriage, any advice for someone experienced in that?

Don’t do it.

I’m not going to divorce him so I’m going to need better tips than that.

Honesty, the biggest thing is communication. Constant communication for me was important, feel connected to the him, taking as many opportunities to see each other, and taking turns doing that so one person doesn’t feel like it’s their duty to keep things going is important. It’s an equal partnership in that sense. It was fine time to be just the two of you if you are visiting. He would come to visit me and then everyone would want to see them. I’m like, “We need our time. Love you all, but leave us alone.” Making sure you have just you-time together when you’re visiting each other. That’s all. If you can avoid it, that’s great but in some situations, you just can’t.

Constant communication is important for feeling connected. Taking turns maintaining the connection ensures that no one feels solely responsible. Share on X

What about the economic impact of trying to maintain two households and the distress that’s put on the relationship?

I was lucky that I was able to. I was offered a room with a friend for a very low amount of money. I was very lucky in that sense. It did not work out as far as our, let’s say compatibility in the same space. They are very different personality than me. I was like, “I’m going to go live with my parents.” My parents luckily gave me my old room and I lived there for 7 of the 10 months that I was gone. We didn’t have to worry about the finances of things.

There were some opening old things that you forget about. Financially, when we went back in the same space, there was a realization. I used a credit card that I would use, so he didn’t see. It was not to be secretive. It was to make him not feel homesick because if he saw me going here with my friends or here with my friends. I was afraid he’d be like, “She’s just spending our money on going here, there and everywhere.” I would put it on cards.

This is embarrassing to admit, but then he did the same thing but he knew about me doing it. I didn’t know about him doing it. It would be him going and he ended up having, looking at it now, it’s a tiny amount on a car that I was like, “What is this about?” I remember I got home. We get in a fight about this one card. I go back to Kentucky and visit my family because I was so upset. Looking at it now, it’s so funny these things that you go, “That was so stupid.”

Living With In-Laws: What You Need To Know

We’re a genius when we have to look backwards. Being in it is a whole different thing, but if someone’s reading this and you’re married, let that little stuff go. We get to share these nuggets of wisdom from our lived experience but it can easily happen. Any advice on living with your in-law? Don’t do it but I understand. Besides that.

 I would advise not to do it because I feel like on many levels it ruined our relationship and a lot of repair work have had to be done.

When you say repair, with your in-laws or with you and Jerry?

Mainly like them. The only thing that brought us back was his death because we got so pulled apart. I’m not trying to be polarizing on this, so I’m not going to say anything specific other than to say they had very staunch views about certain political things that were gross and discussing to me. I would hear them say things and go, “What are you saying?” It didn’t stop once we left their home. They were comfortable saying certain things in front of me that they wouldn’t have said when Jerry and I had just met.

A relationship where I felt very close to his mom, I pulled away a lot. I pulled away from his dad almost completely because his dad and I would get into actual verbal like altercations about belief systems and political belief systems. That was a struggle. I wouldn’t recommend it. I wouldn’t at all. Unless, you know that you’re on the same page with them but it changes your relationship either way. You have to be careful about doing it. I do. I have no words of wisdom when it comes to that, honestly.

Jerry’s Life-Changing Diagnosis And Treatment Journey

That’s fair. Thank you for that advice and sharing that information because we found ourselves in situations, if nothing else, someone knows that they’re not alone in everything else we’ve talked about that. This is something that is familiar and similar and does look the same for other people. Jerry goes to the doctor thinking it’s what?

His gallbladder. He had an acid reflux for a while. I don’t know if I’m supposed to even talk about this, legally. He took a medication on a regular basis for his acid reflux that now is taking off the shelves and they are all suits against them that he may or may not be part of. I don’t want to go into too much detail about it. He had reflux very bad. He figured it was gallbladder going bad. Most of the people in his family had their gallbladder go bad. He went to go get it checked out and that’s when they see spots on his liver.

Are you there with him when he got this diagnosis?

No. I remember the text message while I was teaching and him going, “I’m scared. They found spots on my liver and I don’t know what’s going on.” I was like, “It’s probably just a fatty liver. It’s fine. That happens a lot,” but in my heart, I remember my stomach syncing to my butt. It was horrifying to hear about.

Where were when you received this text?

I was teaching at the time.

Let me back up. Did he received this information the same day the doctor’s visit or was this a follow-up giving information if you recall?

I’m trying to remember exactly but I think it was the same day because all of a sudden, they were doing extra Imaging and he asked why. He was told by whoever the radiologist was that there was something that they were seeing and he was going to have to do follow-up with his general practitioner. There was just a lot that unraveled from there where he did CAT scans. There were 30 spots on his liver. They never told me. I don’t think they ever told us about the lungs. I found that out on my own later.

How old was Jerry at this moment?

39.

How long have you been together at this point?

Seven years, if I’m doing the math correct. I think I’m remembering correctly on that. He found this out. He had a biopsy done and at that point, we had to wait for the results and they were not calling us. It was close to the weekend I want to say and I said, “You have to call them or not going to get the results before weekend and we’re going to have to wait a whole weekend to find out what the results are.” We get on a joint phone call with the doctor and they say, “The spot on your liver came back as colon cancer.” We were both like, “What?”

It’s going to your head, “Liver and colon cancer.” The world starts slowing down.

You’re just like, “I don’t understand.” I didn’t understand but I did. I worked in a hospital for five years as the patient care assistant and a health unit coordinator. That was when I first met Jerry. I was doing that position while I was in school. I knew but I didn’t know because we had not heard anything about his colon. We had only heard about the liver. While we were waiting for his biopsy to be done, I asked the doctor for a copy of the radiology report and he’s in the room like getting the biopsy done.

They give me the report and then leave. I’m sitting there knowing enough to be able to read this report. His mom’s a nurse or was a nurse. His dad’s a nurse anesthetist, so we’re sitting there reading the report and I am sobbing because I see there’s not just liver spots. There’s eleven spots on his lung. We get this phone call and he has one spot in his stomach, in his colon. We don’t know that at the time.

We just know that the other spots are from colon cancer. That was a result there. They have to do a colonoscopy because there’s colon cancer. At that point, we hear it’s from one spot which means it’s metastasized. It was 11 spots on the lung and 30 on the liver and then they do a colonoscopy. Maybe this being a warning for everyone for preventive care. He had one spot in his colon.

You hear one spot on the colon and you go, “How is it named someplace else?” These cells travel throughout our body. The colon is an area with a lot of traffic coming through. It’s processing things in our body and it can carry to one place or another. That’s why they check your lymph nodes to be able to see where the cancer is also in the different regions.

I learned from my particular journey dealing with breast cancer myself. The stages come from the different locations that it is and the further along it is in your body. Not that it is always an extreme in different areas. It’s just that it’s located in more than one area, which is also going to dictate the level of treatment and care.

If you have it in one location, the likelihood of having radiation processes of a point, it’s possible but once you start getting to multiple locations, then chemo becomes the path of Western medicine choice to be able to attack the cancer in multiple areas. The challenge of that is, it’s attacking your good cells along with their bad cells and your body is trying to rejuvenate at the same time. You’re hearing this diagnosis and your mind is racing thinking of all these different things and what this means. “I still want to be strong for him because he probably doesn’t need to see me falling apart because he’s trying to be strong.” I’ll let you add whatever from there.

I know from reading that report that it’s probably cancer. We get the colon part, which we’ve never heard. Now, I know it’s cooling cancer that has metastasized to these areas. I know with that number, we don’t have a lot of time in my head. That was enough to cover the majority of the liver. They’re in the lungs. It’s going to impact his breathing. I had this whole idea of how quick I thought everything was going to go.

We find all this out. Immediately, putting a port in. A little thing on your chest where you were able to access or put medications and get access to IV medications quicker. He starts Oxaliplatin which is like the gold standard for colon cancer and it’s twelve rounds. People typically get to six before they have to quit and it’s pretty toxic. It starts to make you have neuropathy. It makes things that are cold almost feel like a lightning bolt to the system and then he did well with it. His CEA was in the 300s. A typical CEA account to make sure that you don’t have cancers about five.

The CEA indicates the molecules or whatever of that stuff. I don’t know all the science, but what I can tell you is the CEA was our marker of how well he was doing. As he went on, it was dropping and dropping. He was a stubborn man and he said, “I’m going to make it to the end.” Usually, if you haven’t quit by round six, you’ve reduced to 50% as far as the amount that you’re taking. He went the full amount to eleven and then he couldn’t get to the last one because he started losing finger or feeling, so feeling in his fingers. He had neuropathy.

He was pissed about that because he wanted to be able to say, “I did all twelve of them,” but his CEA dropped from the 300s down to 11. For the first time, we had hope in this entire situation because it was not looking good and his scans looked good. Things were calcifying. They weren’t active as much and there were no new spots here and there. In the process, there was a lot of emotional upheaval.

Balancing Family Life And Caregiving During Health Challenges

We’re not going to be generic. What was it like watching him go through this?

It was awful.

How were you managing him, work, children and everything else? Was there a family pitching in? How did that go?

It was hard because you see this big gigantic strong man who’s been your personal bouncer struggling. That was probably one of the hardest things about. It was knowing that he was struggling but also him being so stubborn that he would push himself. He looked healthy. Anyone that would see us out in public would not know. They wouldn’t know. He didn’t lose his hair. He didn’t lose a ton of weight. In fact, at some point, he gained it when he switched medications after those eleven rounds.

By all accounts, no one would know what was going on if they saw him in public. Except for if he had his little pack or whatever with him. That was crazy because internally, you’re going through a damn storm in your head constantly of, what am I going to do? For me, it was practicality. I was a teacher. I made no money. I was in a field in mental health that we don’t make a lot of money, honestly, at the end of the day. Compared to the amount you’re going to pay for education. I’m sitting here going like, “I don’t know how I’m going to raise two children on my own,” with that original diagnosis.

I was thinking we had weeks and he wasn’t going to be around in a couple of months but he persisted. It was a constant roller coaster on my end. I was preparing for this thing that I knew eventually would happen while trying to pretend like I had hoped that he would overcome this incurable situation. Miracles happen but maybe it was a pessimistic part of me. I had to plan if the miracle didn’t happen. That part of me that needed to be prepared negatively impacted our relationship because I was being supportive while I also needed to be supported.

I didn’t have the physical ailment that he did and I didn’t have to go through the physical aspect of cancer. When you’re a caretaker, you are going through your own process of grief, preparation, and having to be now a strong person for the person who was strong for you. Putting it out to the world like you have it all together by making a caring bridge page and telling everyone how treatments going while also getting the kids from school and multitasking. Even the day after his diagnosis, we said, “We’re going to work tomorrow. We’re not going to stop. We can’t stop. We just have to keep going after this.” That’s how we bucked up and went through it. That’s maybe a bit of a thing that I’ve continued on through the grieving process a little bit.

When you're a caretaker, you are going through your own process of grief. You have to be a strong person for the person who was strong for you. Share on X

We do what we can do sometimes.

It was very difficult. Physically, I fell apart. I couldn’t eat after he was diagnosed and also after he died for three weeks. I don’t know what it is about three weeks. I dropped 30 pounds right after he was diagnosed and right after he died very quickly.

Facing Mortality And Prioritizing What Matters

Let’s back up a little bit. At what point did you and Jerry, or was there ever a point that you and Jerry felt like he’s going to pass soon and to stop wasting time with everything else?

There was but it’s hooked until almost the very end. He and I had a tendency to bicker and fight about things. I talked about it on TikTok. We were not in the best place the July before or August before he died. We had a lot of reparative work with to do the month before he passed.

What month and year was that?

It was 2020.

What month in 2020?

In August of 2020, he and I had one of the biggest fights that we’ve ever had in our relationship and it was like, “Alright, fine. Divorce. Blah, blah, blah. How is this going to look? I’m going to look like the worst person ever because it looks like it’s just me like I’m leaving him but there’s also all of this change that’s happening. He can’t attend to me because he’s intending to himself. I need somebody but I have nobody because he’s been my best friend this whole time. Now he’s sick and I have to focus on him. Where does that leave me?” It sounds very selfish but when you’re a caretaker in the situation, you feel very isolated.

You said something, when you’re the caretaker. We are not raised to become the full-on caretaker for this person that we marry. We sign up for it and we’ll do it but it sounds like you had a trained professional to be a nurse and now you’re using those same skills to be the caretaker for the man that you love.

When I’m 34 years old. Sign up for if you’re 80 years old or 90 years old and you’re taking care of them but when you’re in your 30s and you’re young. You have children to take care of. I hope I’m not twisting this because he did.

There’s no guilt applied. Being a caretaker is a 24-hour job. Even if you’re trying to be at work, go grocery shopping, pick up the kids, and do everything else. No one gets to know how much you are suffering. There is a reason why people allow their loved ones to be in a care facility because the weight is so heavy. You cannot juggle any and everything, but then there’s guilt applied. You couldn’t handle it. You can take care of him. You can do all this. It’s natural to say, “Who’s helping me as I’m going through all of this?” I don’t apply guilt. It’s uncharted territory and we do the best that we know how to do with what we have.

He did do a lot. He did. I don’t want to pretend like, “I took on every single test.” I didn’t. He stayed very active until the last month and a half before he died. That’s when I started seeing glimpses. We have this fight and it took two weeks to resolve it. That’s probably the longest we’ve ever stayed that angry at each other and we talked it through. We figure some stuff out and out of nowhere, I start noticing, he’s losing weight.

We knew the treatments were not working great but they were working to keep it maintained or we thought then he went in for a follow-up. His CEA triples out of nowhere. The medication is not working. He’s continuing to lose weight. Over like a two months period, he drops 75 pounds. An incredible difference. In pictures that I show, there’s a drastic change because there’s not a lot of pictures of the in between time. He was a big guy. He was a big guy when he died, but his arms were skinny. You can see that in a lot of my videos and stuff that I post.

He lost a tremendous amount of weight. He starts getting jaundice the month before he passed. I go, “It’s a rough month for the liver. The medication is going to start working.” We decide to go back to Oxaliplatin, which can be very dangerous because of how toxic it is the first time but it worked so good the first time. We were like, “We’ll do anything. We’re going to try anything we can. We’re going to get this liver working.” I think he got one round of it and then never got to do another because his counts dropped.

When I tell people like, “Tell the people you love that you love them because you don’t know if you’re going to get another chance.” I watched the person who was a strong football build guy in two months drops 75 pounds, become jaundice, not able to walk, and retain so much water in his limbs. He couldn’t walk and looked like he was going to pop at any minute. Cancer can change so fast. Very fast and it did for us.

 

We had decided in July that we were going to go on a trip together as a family because he was healthy at the time. We decided to go to Florida and now this is in 2020. It was probably irresponsible but we all know we were coming to an end of the journey, so we needed to take stock in the time that we had. We put on the masks and we get on the plane. Everything’s fine. He was ill but not terribly ill. As the trip progressed because I said to Jerry, “Jerry, you’re not doing well. You need to do chemo. We should cancel this trip,” and he insisted, “No, we’re going on this trip.”

We’re going on the trip. His legs swell very bad, so we’re wrapping them every morning with Ace bandages and he can’t walk to the beach even though it’s across the street. We get him a wheelchair that works in the sand or my aunt did. God bless her. I can’t talk about her without getting emotional, but she rented that for him so he was able to go to the beach with us certain days. He would get himself from the upstairs to the downstairs to be able to be there when the kids played in the pool. There were 1 or 2 days where he got in the pool with them and we have a lot of pictures and a lot of video from that time.

That is what they remember and recall more than anything else from their dad. I’m so glad he pushed us to go because that was what made all of the difference for their memory. They remembered daddy happy on the beach. They dream about him on the beach. I’m glad that he pushed us to go but I knew we were at the end because we were having trouble getting him through the airport. We automatically got a wheelchair to wheel him through the airport. His jaundice is the worst that it’s been. He didn’t eat very much the last couple of days.

He was fine getting on the plane and when we get off of the plane, I asked him, “Where did we park or where did you park?” He parked the car while we went into the terminal. He said some random number and color or something. We go to look in that area and the car’s not there. Jerry was always like on it. He knew all of the little details and I was like, “Are you sure this is where it is because this is like giraffe and color versus number and letter.” He was like, “I think it’s this,” and it didn’t exist. What he was saying didn’t exist.

When a person is in the dying process with their liver shutting down, the ammonia level rises and they become somewhat disoriented. They’re not unaware but their memory starts to get a little shady. He had that going on and I was very upset because we were tired from traveling. We had a delay. I’m sitting here walking around, clicking the alarm button and finally find the car like 20 minutes or 30 minutes later.

Segue, take a picture where you park so we don’t have to remember. We go on vacation and we forget all that. When we get to the airport, take a picture. I sent it to him and I’m sick. I’m going to forget all of that, but it’s frustrating. You got the kids, the luggage and you’re tired. This is happening at the same time but we’re still human and frustrated about regular human stuff. We don’t get to say, “Jerry is leaving this world of cancer and I don’t get to get him most, so I get upset or be the first I am.” Those duality are going on.

Honestly, that’s something that I have to contend with a lot in my head because as I said, I love that man more than myself most of the time. I expected a lot from him. I didn’t expect him to be the same person when he was healthy as when he was sick, but there were things that naturally come with being ill with cancer and getting cancer treatments. Their problematic in a relationship, whether the person feels emasculated because of issues in the bedroom or they feel like they can’t do this.

You have to wait an extra six months before they patch the hole in the wall. They would normally have done it the second you brought it up any other time. Little things would get under my skin but here’s the thing, it wasn’t so much that he didn’t do it. It was the fact that I was watching him decline and not be able to do it.

That was a bigger issue. You were managing cancer. It’s taking him away every little bit of the process. Not so much he didn’t do it but he’s going to die. This is another of this reality and there’s no place else to put the anger.

I got frustrated with him. The one thing that I remember is we said, “We are not going to see anyone on Sunday. We are going to take that day for ourselves and relax,” because we didn’t have to go to work or anything. That’s what we’re just going to do and that’s what we did. We didn’t have any anybody there. The kids played around. We watched television, got pizza and chilled out that whole day. I remember getting frustrated with him because my mom had a range like for our very last date.

There’s this place down in Saint Petersburg called the Don CeSar. It’s very fancy pink and gigantic building that’s haunted. I wanted to get married on the beach there, but you can’t do that as a Catholic. My mom arranged for us to have a private dinner on the beach while we were down there. I was sad because I had hoped that he would take the initiative and do those things. Again, it was another sign. He didn’t do that, so that would have been something he would have normally done. Now, I feel like we’re getting to the end of the journey.

He was just so sick. He didn’t even have it in him to say anything. He was just like there. I took it as he didn’t care. I can look at like messages that have been sent. I should delete all of the messages between us. I never will but there were conversations we would have on text messaging that I just go back and I’m like, “I did this on the 22nd because I like to hurt myself.” I was like, “I was such an *******.” The things I didn’t like go or the way that I said things, versus I could have just said it a little bit more delicately.

I know I said so many things out of fear and I saw it as anger. Now, as a therapist, I can go I was terrified and my being angry in this moment was me seeing what life would be like if he wasn’t here or him not doing the thing is because I would have had to have done it and screwed it up because I don’t know how to do anything. I saw all that dynamic. That Sunday, we spent a lot of time together and did life. I had prepared to go back to work on Monday.

They were planning on doing something called an ERCP for him to see if there was something blocking his liver. They did it. There was nothing blocking his liver. His liver was just failing. I left work and I said, “I’m not coming back.” In Tuesday, he had an oncology appointment and that night, I turned to him after we put the kids to bed and I said, “What are we going to talk about tomorrow?” He said, “I want to talk to them about hospice.” I was like, okay. Sorry. Do people normally get emotional on these shows?

Always. I don’t know why you didn’t have tissue. This hurts. This is hard and you have agreed to have this conversation because you want people to know they’re not alone. It’s only in our pain that they see and they get it this is not easy. You may have a little makeup on and doing stuff but that is not where we were at that moment.

That’s why when we were having a pre-episode conversation, I was saying maybe it’s better than make a day after this because this is takes us back. Oftentimes, we’ll talk about piece of this but this may be one of the only times to talk about living from the beginning to the whole process were a twenty minutes therapy session. That’s a run out or stuff like that. It’s like it’s a draw.

A lot of it I can say, I have to compartmentalize and put to the back of my head until I actively think about it. That’s a huge part of being able to move forward with everything is. I can part mentalize like that happened. I can’t live with the gravity of that specific thing. That conversation about going into hospice, I can’t think about that every day or I will never be able to function.

I cannot think about watching Mark have that heart attack every day. I know it happened. I know I was there but if I hyper focused on that, my brain would just tap out. That’s like living in a state of trauma always. I’m not in denial that it happened. I can certainly recall that if I have to go back into my memory but I don’t stand and recall everything my kids have done wrong. Every time I’m talking to them, that’s what I’m hyper focused on because that’s not fair in life. It would knock down that one moment.

That one moment is part of my life but I cannot make that moment and I don’t say this lightly but that moment can consume me and take everything if I don’t put it in place. Sometimes, I need to put that back on the show, in the back of the closet, behind the shoes and everything else and go, “We will come back to you when it becomes relevant but I can’t have you here all the time.” That makes no sense.

I agree.

To hear your strong 6’5 husband say, “I want to talk about hospice.”

It was overwhelming. I can tell you there was that conversation. I’m trying to remember the exact timeline. I think that conversation happened on Monday night before we went to the oncology appointment. I remember at that point realizing like, “That’s it. This is the end.” With all the fighting we had been doing, I said, “I’m just so sorry. Will you please forgive me? Please, forgive me. Please.” I don’t remember anything after that. It’s like I blocked it out but I remember asking for it and him saying, “There’s nothing to forgive.”

I know that we ended on a good note. I know that if he can see everything now, I would hope that he knows because I’m a Christian. I don’t know if I’m Catholic anymore but he can see, I would hope, that I loved him tremendously, despite all of the things that were rocky at the end. We woke up the next morning and go to the oncology appointment. We have that conversation with his doctor who was lovely. The greatest oncology doctor you could possibly ask for after we had his general practitioner be just such a jerk over the phone telling us about a cancer diagnosis and never even mentioned that part of it.

You did.

He did it over the phone versus like, “Let’s talk about this in person.” I think that’s just something you see in TV. It’s not something that happens, the whole sit down and let’s have this conversation but over the phone and very just direct about it. No emotions but he had an amazing oncologist. At day one he said, “I don’t know where this is going to lead you. What I know is we’re going to treat it like a chronic illness. Hopefully, we can get you to your son’s 8th grade graduation,” which did not happen but he worked tirelessly to help Jerry.

I loved him. I loved all of the nurses that worked with Jerry. We had just the most amazing experience in such a horrid situation. They were lovely. On the way there, he was complaining. He was very uncomfortable. He was having a lot of pain. We get into the office. He almost was in his pain. I don’t know how else to explain it other than he was not there anymore. It was just pain. They said, “We’re going to direct admit him to the ER. We’re going to have you set up for hospice after that.”

He went to the ER. Reminder, it was COVID times. I went back in there and my mother-in-law called their priest. He came and did last rites for Jerry at that time. A very emotional process but healing on some level as well. Nobody else could go back which became a contentious thing with my in-laws because they all wanted to check on him. They got his pain under control with pretty major medications, which I understood the gravity with working in the hospital for five years. They said, “We’re going to send you home with heavy hitting drugs.”

They explained all of that to us. Hospice came in and were wonderful. They said, “We’ll be there tomorrow at 11:00. We’ll get everything set up for you.” I can’t say enough things about hospice, honestly. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. Jerry and I had a conversation years before this point that he would not die in this home so that memory was not sealed here. When it got to that point, he would get taken to like the facility. That was a decision that was made long before now.

We go home and his pain is controlled. He goes to bed. Before that, we sat our kids down. Jackson knew Daddy had ouches in his belly because he had been 3 to 6 when he was having this diagnosis. He knew that he had a little robot named Bob during certain treatments that he would bring home. That was the treatment that continued for 48 hours after his initial treatment. We named him Bob. He knew daddy was sick but he didn’t know how bad. It was weird how much they knew because they knew he was looking sick. It was an emotional conversation.

My son is on the spectrum, so it takes a lot for him to get upset. He didn’t at that point, but he very methodically was understanding what was going to happen. There would be these people from a place called hospice that daddy would go to a place where he would eventually die. It was emotional for my daughter and a lot of love, hugs, and taking care of. It probably one of the top three worst conversations of my life but we wanted to put on a front for the kids that everything was okay for as long as we could.

We wanted them to think everything was alright until we couldn’t pretend anymore. We didn’t know because when we went to the oncology appointment, they said he had 48 weeks of time. He went home. We had this conversation on that Tuesday night. The kids go to bed. Now they know that daddy is sick and dying. Not in the right mind, I sent them to school the next day because hospice has to come and set everything up. Logistically, they can’t be running around.

We thought they can’t be out of school for 48 weeks, plus the time after he dies. Hospice comes and they said the bed up where I’m sitting. This desk is where my dog laid under next to him the entire time. He was fine that morning. I walked him down the stairs on Wednesday morning. I got the kids to school. I remember leaning into him and going, “Please be here when I get back,” because there was no one else there yet. It was just him and I and the kids. His parents were coming a little bit later. He was alert and oriented but fuzzy.

I come back and he asks for medication. “That’s fine but hospice is coming up at 11:00. Are you sure?” He said yes. He took them medicine and he was dazed and confused from that point. I never had another conversation with him after. There was one point before that medicine kicked in where I was walking him to the bathroom. He’s struggling a lot. He shuffling and I’m shuffling back with him. I said, “I told you I wanted to dance with you more, but this is not what I meant by that.” He and I walked in. The medicine kicked in and he was never dairy again after that point. His was eyes not open and mumbling things.

Hospice comes and that’s everything up at 11:00. His parents came. His brother lives down in Louisville and I said Frank, “It’s time for you to come up here. It’s time. You need to come up. You need to be with your brother for a little bit.” Not knowing that he would stop taking medicine by mouth. He was not alert and oriented. Trying to get him back to the bed was a full 5 or 6 people job. He goes from the chair to the bed and becomes not responsive.

He wouldn’t swallow his medicine when it’s mixed with water. His family stayed the whole time. How did it feel? It felt like I was being invaded while also knowing that the invaders were friendly and they were here for him. It was like this is my space and people are in it. I would need people out of it but knowing that they were here for all the right reasons. This is a very complicated feeling of all over the place and with him not taking any medicine by mouth the question was to my sister-in-law who was an oncology nurse.

I have three sisters-in-law. One is an oncology and the other two are PACU post-surgery nurses. A whole family of nurses on that side. My mom’s a nurse practitioner. We are a very health care family. My dad’s a physical therapist and I’m now a mental health care person. It was everyone. I was afraid was going to have an opinion, but I didn’t want anybody’s but hers. I pulled her out and I said, “Angela, I need to know. What do I do? Is it time to have him go to the unit? Should I call hospice?” He’s only been in hospice for like 10 hours at this point. She’s like, “You need to call. I think it’s time to go. He’s choking on whatever they’re giving him.”

I thought they would switch it to IV and that didn’t happen either. Long story short, there were a lot of little moments. The kids saying goodbye because they had to go to bed eventually. I explained to them that I thought daddy was going to be going to the place that we told them about and that I wasn’t sure if they would get to say goodbye, so they needed to say goodbye at that time because I didn’t know what the rules were for hospice as far as who could go. Especially little ones at that time was with COVID.

I remember holding my son, who again is on the spectrum. I said, “Jackson, we’re going to take daddy.” I just remember him hysterically crying and rocking him like he was a baby at like 5 or 6 years old and Kennedy snuggling with him with her blanket that she falls asleep with every night. Still sucks her thumb and just holds it up to her nose. It’s been washed a million times but she does it because it reminds her of that. I think she has that in her head. I put in an Airpod for his ear and I turned on the song Come What May because it’s what we danced too from Moulin Rouge. It’s what we connected with.

The song Come What May is on that and we danced to it at our wedding. It was our first dance together as a married couple. I played that for him. People took turns saying goodbye. They said that the transport would come at 11:00. That got canceled and then they said it would be 2:00 in the morning that they would come. At 2:00 in the morning, an ambulance shows up to the house. That’s sucked because I knew he was in pain. It was only time I heard him make a lot of noise.

Hospice comes at 2:30 in the morning and they transported him and then he arrived at the facility. What happens next?

He got admitted to one of the rooms. Hospice had a rule at the time that no more than five visitors could come and it had to be the exact same five visitors. It was 1 of 5, so it got tricky. Some sisters may have pretended like they were other sisters. It’s fine, but it was mainly the three of us, his parents and myself that stayed the entire time and the sisters would take turns.

The children did not see him there.

No, because he was only there from 2:00 in the morning until 11:35.

What happened was, they were giving him PO meds by mouth medications and he was just drowning in them. I was like, “You can’t keep giving him the stuff. He’s not processing it. I don’t think it’s helping him.” They said, “We’re going to do morphine by his port.” I was like, “Thank you, God.” It was just moment of relief. I’m sorry to be graphic about this. Major trigger warnings. He was having his death rattle. It happened for a very long time and I was telling him over again, I said, “Babe, it’s okay. You can go.”

You’re feeling their body gets very warm because their body’s trying to do whatever it’s doing. Their body feels hot like a heater next to you. You can just feel it from far away. I know he’s close to the end. His nails start to get dusky like a grayish purple color, which means they’re not circulating. The blood’s not circulating. I know we’re at the end. I can feel him fighting just so hard even to the very end.

This has happened within hours. This is happening quickly.

Very quickly. That all happened within 12 hours. Slowly, it got bad though when we finally got to hospice. I’m exhausted. It’s like 4:00 in the morning. I slept like an hour and a half and then woke up. You’re talking and you’re like, “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay. I promise I’m going to work my butt off to make sure the kids are okay.” I’m trying to reassure him. The death rattle was probably bothering me and his mother. It was bothering us all and I said, “He needs to not get anything else by mouth.” They said finally the port thing and I was like okay.

I just dissected what happened here out of grief a little bit better. His nurse goes to his parents and they turned to them and said, “I’m going to be accessing his port. Can you please step out? I can only have one person in the room.” I think what she was doing right there was giving me my minute that I needed with just him without ever saying the words because she got everything prepped.

She looked me in the eyes and goes, “Once I get this done, you will only have a few minutes left.” I’m like, “What? I didn’t know that that’s what was going on here.” I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble but she could just tell how bad his breathing was. I think she just knew if she gave it to him, it would probably suppress his breathing enough to like that would be it. She has asked his parents to leave the room. They’re pissed off about that.

This was a medicine to end his pain and she knew how it would impact his breathing. I just want to clarify that.

This is 100% to take care of him. I asked for it over and over again because he couldn’t take things by my mouth.

People demand pain medication.

I didn’t want him to be in pain. His parents didn’t want him to be in pain. We were like, give him the IV stuff. She tells me this and I am holding his hand. I run out of the room to go get his parents after I had my three seconds after hearing that information because I did not want them to not be there. They brought him into the world. They should be there to say goodbye. I ran and I found them. I said, “You have to come back. She said that this could suppress his breathing enough. This is going to be it.”

We just stood around him. His sister had shown up at the time. She was with them. We were watching him taking his labored breaths, 22 seconds between a breath. His sister Angela who helped me make that decision and who had been there for us through the whole process of understanding the treatments and what was going to happen next. She got there when he was taking his very last breath. We were together and that’s when he died.

Reflecting On Life After Loss

Thank you for being so willing to share such a private moment and a heart moment. Does that look different now for you later than what you thought it looked like before? Has it become clear? As you just mentioned, you had a better understanding of different pieces of that. How was remembering that changed over the years?

The nurse part I think I understand now. I might be wrong about it but I think I’m right about it. My choice to run after his parents stays the exact same no matter what our relationship is. No matter how much we have bought in the past. I will never ever take something that somebody deserves away from them and they deserve to be there no matter what because they had a loving and wonderful relationship with him. Looking at that, that’s something that’s new.

If I had known anything different, I would have kept my kids out of school that day if I had known it wasn’t 48 weeks and it was 48 hours. I would have brought them there. As far as everything, there was some conflict after he passed. When the Pastoral care came in and they were complaining about not being allowed in the ER the day before. I turned into them and I said, “He just died.” I can look back now and go that was them grieving.

The Day Jerry Took His Last Breath

I thought they were just being ********, but the truth is that was their grief. They had to be angry at something. They chose to be angry, the pastoral care about the ER instead of my child just literally took his last breaths after an incredible battle. He worked his butt off. I thought he had weeks and that man almost lived three years after his diagnosis. He worked hard. I think hospice is a God sent for many people.

I know some people may not have the best of stories but, for me, they were everything we needed. I’m very thankful for the support. Going through the COVID process, I’ve done a lot and trying to figure out what that loss looked like because it was still in the midst of COVID. The funeral was then changed. Things had to be changed and practices that would normally happen to be changed. Things like being able to have everyone that wanted to be there to support us. I had friends that went out in the parking lot and said a rosary for us because they couldn’t come in or be with me.

I had to rely on his family as my support at that time but also, that was a precedence for what the next year’s would look like because as much as we’ve had issues, we have put those aside. We’ve put them aside for the most part and we’ve been each other’s source of comfort. His sisters are still my sisters and his brothers is still my brother. When we say in-laws, it’s one or two.

We have to figure out which in-law we talk about because they’re still and they will always be my in-laws. My nieces and nephews are my nieces and nephews and they will never be anything other than my nieces and nephews through marriage to him. That side of the family got strengthened through what a horrendous process it was. The importance of family was also a major thing that I gained.

Understanding Anticipatory Grief: What Does It Really Mean?

That is beautiful because there are so many people that those in-laws pop smoke as soon as the service was over. That relationship was no more. If you hear the word anticipatory grief, what comes to mind? The term I should say.

I mean anticipatory grief was awful but I will say that it prepped me in a way that I needed to be prepped for this life. My anticipatory grief came out as preparedness. It had to be organizational. I had to understand how we would survive, so I skipped a lot of parts. I didn’t even think about this. We ended up moving from the first house that we bought to the one that I am in now. We had it built because it’s right next to where he worked and right next to where I did work but I still work right next to where I did work. I’m very close still.

Where I used to work is about a quarter of a mile from where I currently work. It’s very close. Maybe a mile total. It didn’t matter a whole lot about me moving those jobs. We moved into this house because I was anticipating that when he was gone, I had to have a house that I could have people back to. We never had people back after the funeral. It was all done in a haul somewhere. I had to have this house because it would be easier for us to go together to appointments.

He wanted to be closer to work, so it wasn’t so stressful going all the way from the Westside to the Eastside which was about a 30-35 minutes commute. When you were in Virginia, you’re like, “That’s a good commute. Who cares?” When you’re here and you can be 5 or 10 minutes down the street from work, we chose that. We had those plans. I was worried about where the kids would be in school. I wanted to get them in the best school system that I could, but not the best one because that would be too much. It’s too big and I work for them but it’s funny.

I’m all over the place but all of my preparation is what my anticipatory grief looked like. The minute that I would allow myself to go, “What will it be without him?” My brain would shut off and say, “No, we’re not doing that. I can’t let you go there. I can’t possibly.” When he wasn’t here, the anticipatory grief allowed me to organize in a way that I would be able to handle it but not emotionally.

Social Media’s Role In Grief And Healing

I don’t think it is possible to prepare emotionally what it will look like when they are no longer here. It is beyond. It’s like, what do you see when you can see your baby for the first time. It’s explained labor but the thought of you seeing this child. That emotion you cannot fathom. What role has social media played in your healing and grief journey?

I started using TikTok as a coping mechanism when the pandemic happened. I started watching. This is like a mad prop to this person because there are a lot of people that I adore and are on TikTok. I remember seeing Sara @WorstLittleWidow.

It’s sad to be excited but this means you need to join our grief discord. Sara’s in there and the talk is real.

I know and I saw her. I’m not a lie. I will never forget she commented on one of my videos. I watched. I was a lurker. I started following her right before I became a widow to like anticipate what it would be like.

There are a lot of people that do that. They want to get a glimpse of what this widowhood looks like, “Let me find a widow that looks like I can resonate with them.” Sara’s willingness to be so raw, so transparent and so real about her journey like, who has time for these pretenses? I remember her being one of the first people that I followed also.

She commented on one of my things and I lost my mind. I started crying because I was like, “I love her so much.” I look up her so much. I’m alone in this house crying because the regular wonderful person but a regular person on TikTok commented and I had been following her for so long. I learned and I watched all of these widows one at a time. I’m trying to remember Linda, @It’sMamaLinda was one of the ones that I followed for a long time. There’s just a lot of a lot of different people that were creators that I looked up to. They helped walk me through and then, I made a couple of videos that did not have my face in it then I made one controversial video.

Is that video still up because I’m going to need to go find it.

I don’t know that anyone else would think of it as controversial. I don’t know that they would but it’s me standing in this room. I put it on this bookcase looking towards me and it said something like, “This is the sound or this is the feeling of asking my husband to die in this room because I was begging him, please just let go.” People are commenting like, “Who would say that?” I was like, I have to clarify this.

My first time getting on like face video was to clarify like, “There are worse things in death in this world. A lot of people don’t realize that watching someone suffer is sometimes way worse than them dying.” It sparked conversations. All of a sudden, I was making videos for TikTok. I only do TikTok. I don’t do any of the other social media platforms. I utilize Facebook only for the fundraiser that I do at Christmas for children of widows.

There are worse things in death in this world. A lot of people don't realize that watching someone suffer is sometimes way worse than them actually dying. Share on X

I started utilizing TikTok to tell my version of stories and tell people what my experience has been like. At the time, I wasn’t independently licensed so I write very specifically in my bio, “Not posting as a therapist,” because I didn’t want to get to sued. Not sued but getting in trouble with the board and stuff. Now I can say that I’m a therapist and not have to worry about it.

You wanted to share from the perspective of a widow.

I didn’t want people to be like, “I do.” I do talk about mental health because I did individual therapy. We did therapy with Burnside within group therapy with that. Mental health was a hard part about what I talked about but I didn’t want people to go, “She’s a therapist. Of course, she’s going to say that.” I’m like, “No, you have to understand I’m a widow who’s dealing with mental health stuff, who is a mental health provider and telling you how important it is to take care of your mental health.” That’s all.

Have you seen Danielle the Hot Mess Widow or something like that? I can’t remember what she called it. You may want to connect with her.

I will. There’s so many interesting cool people that I’ve connected with through the years. If there’s a troll out there and they say something. We’d hop on each other’s back.

It’s like, back off because we’re here.

It’s like, “Alright, let me take my earrings out.” There are people that I would literally go to bat for that are complete strangers. I don’t know their last names but we have connected through this process of sharing our grief. It’s been a cool community to be part of. Not necessarily because we’d fight for each other but because we have. We have all shared some of the most vulnerable moments of our lives.

I hope authentically for everybody, the feelings that are part of this every day and how quickly they change. What I’ve noticed as I was posting, and there’s times where I will post a ton of stuff then I just stopped. That’s because I’m living then I make a bunch of videos and I stopped posting. It’s not because I’m not engaged in the process. Sometimes, there’s this authenticity feel of like, I feel like I’ve talked about this before. I’ve been through this and I’ve already shared this on here or there’s this person and this new widow who’s expressing it so much better than I am. I get in my own head a lot.

The stitch or not stitch. To do it or not do it.

I have like the biggest inferiority complex you probably have ever seen. As a therapist, it’s embarrassing to say that but it’s true. I have imposter syndrome 24/7. If I’m on TikTok and I’m like, “I’ve made videos that I never post because no one’s going to like this. No one’s going to be able to relate to this, or I could have said this better.” I am not a big creator on TikTok. I’m just not, but I’m not trying to be.

How many people do you have following you on TikTok?

Ten thousand.

That’s a lot of people.

It is. It is a lot of people but I don’t care about that and that’s what I’ve said from the beginning. I don’t care about the numbers. It’s started where I had a hundred people that were all bots and I wasn’t even posting my face then different things would get posted with authenticity and show my story. People would relate.

The relating part, when somebody messes you, how does that feel?

Weird because I have imposter syndrome and also strange. It’s difficult. This part is difficult because I have to be very careful about the lines. It has to be widow to widow and not a person who’s looking for me to be their therapist.

That’s fair.

Not every time but a lot of the times, it feels like I start to go into that where I’m utilizing skills from therapy. That’s where I have to back away and go, “First off, this is boundaries ethical issues that I cannot get into on TikTok. Alos, I just wanted to be a widow here who can offer support and I want to offer support but it has to be as a widow and not as a therapist.”

Preparing For The Inevitable: Talking About Life After Transition 

That’s fair and that’s important for people that may be following you like, “She never responds to me.” It’s a whole different dynamic that you’re dealing with that other people don’t. Did you and Jerry ever have discussions about your life after he transitioned? If did or didn’t, whatever you’re willing to share about that. To the level in which you can give it to a kindergarten. It doesn’t mean you have to tell everything. Whatever you’re comfortable with.

I’m trying to be authentically myself. As the age goes up, I’m trying to just be me. I am bisexual. I tell people the story and I laugh but I remember the day he was diagnosed. We were both in separate cars driving home and he was sitting on the couch. I got in the house and we just sat there. There was a point where I couldn’t deal not being closer to him, so I straddled him. Not a sexual way but to be closer to him. I was just like, “I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I will do whatever you want to do. I’m here for you.” We’re both crying and he pulls away from me and goes, “You can totally move on with a woman.” I’m like, “Oh my God. Jerry, I can’t even. You just got a terminal diagnosis and this is your response to it, sir?”

For real, though?

Yes.

There is a large amount of women that I speak to and they go, “I’m going with the woman this time. I’m not doing this with the dude.” I never factored that in being someone’s journey but I’ve heard many people say that.

He made a joke but it is one of my favorite ones he’s ever made. I don’t share it with a lot of people.

You just shared it. We have a 101 different country, so you just shared it with me.

You have to understand, I taught in Catholic schools for years. It’s a little controversial for me to say that out loud but what I will tell you is an even funnier joke. This was not right of me but it’s funny. My mom and I were sitting out on the deck the day that he died after the kids were put in bed. She lived in with me for four days after that. I told her that story and I was not out to my mom. She found out on the day Jerry died that I was bisexual.

I was like, opportune time. She’s already completely emotionally depleted. Let’s just throw this at her and she will never remember. It’s fine, but then later I made a joke. I was like, “I’m going to move on with a woman,” and she was like, okay. It wasn’t a big deal to her and I know it wouldn’t be. It just wouldn’t. I was open to the idea. It was never the path that I went but he never specified moving on with a man. That was the only comment he made about moving forward.

That’s something I’ve had to mentally grapple with. I will say on a funny note, closed Catholic school teacher and Catholic my entire life. I go to a Psychic. She’s like, “He’s lovingly jealous.” Those are the words that about frequently, is that he wants me to move forward but he’s lovingly jealous. I’m guessing that’s why he never addressed, if that was, but it sounds very much like him.

It’s like he’s lovingly jealous of this situation because he knows that I have to move forward at some point. Why wouldn’t he be jealous? He’s my husband. That’s what I think. It’s okay. This is a joke that has continued on. After Fran and I got together and the kids realize his partner died as well, is what if daddy and Andre got together? Now there are a couple in heaven. We’re down here and I immediately thought of the words lovingly jealous like the immediate word because I was like, “I would be happy for him, but I’m jealous as hell.” Even though I had moved forward and I was engaged to be married to somebody new. It just makes sense, lovingly jealous.

Mentioning Fran, how do we get to dating? What does that look like?

Can I be honest with you?

You’ve been lied to me the whole time?

I don’t know if you’re interested in the idea because there’s a lot. There is a lot between when he died and to where I am now.

The Meaning Of Christmas After Loss

Let’s talk about something else. How do we get into wanting to do the Christmas gifts for widows?

The year that he died, Christmas was always a big deal for me and for him. I knew I wanted to do something but I was two months in the grief. There was nothing that I was ready to do and then I started seeing all of these widows talking about on this group that I’m part of on Facebook that’s Young and Widowed With Children. Its a group that we have that supports young widowed parents. A lot of them were saying, “I don’t know how I’m going to afford Christmas this year. I’m barely getting by a rent.” All of these things that I was hearing and I was just like, “Jerry would never want a child to go without a gift.”

I was like, “There you go. That’s it.” The second year after he died, I put out on my Facebook, “We never did a GoFundMe for my family.” We never did like fundraisers. We never did any of those kinds of things, so I don’t know if they’re making up for it now with this whole thing but I put it out there. “I would love to buy Christmas presents for a family at Christmas time that are widowed, to the parents who are widowed. Here’s a GoFundMe if you’re interested in donating. That would be great.” I had a goal of $300. My friends and family shared it, liked it, and commented. I ended up, the first year was like $3,500. I was shocked. I thought I was just going to be buying for one family but at that point, I was like, “I can help lots of families in the situation.”

You have a goal like a map and other stuff. I want to them to know because I want people to support this vision.

This is the board since 2001. Each year, it gets a new color in all of the states that children have been helped in. A lot of them have been colored over in multiple years and the same state in the same year. These are all the kids in the states that we’ve been able to help and the parents at that time of the year. What I do is, every year, I make a new GoFundMe and set it out on Facebook. Now, I have introduced it to TikTok.

There have been some very generous donors on TikTok. There was one woman that donated $500 just herself. I was like, “That’s insane.” Each year, it’s increased by a thousand, so $3,500, $4,500 and then $5,500 roughly. It’s a total of 182 kids, I want to say. The rules has changed. We do the ins and outs. You don’t need to know all of, but it’s a long process of doing the vetting and figuring out who needs the help and getting their Amazon wishlists. They have a budget of like $75 for each child. We go through them and we pick the gifts off of the wishlist and they get directly sent to their homes then they have them for Christmas.

Financial Challenges Of Widowhood

Thank you. I would like to put those. We want to support. Your show is being aired in January of 2025. We may or may not have it at that time but people will have your social media accounts where they can link in when the next year starts. I want to talk about the financial devastation that a widow or widowed will go through when their spouse passes? What have you seen as people share that with you?

It’s horrifying. What I talked about occasionally on TikTok is I have widow privilege. I was lucky enough that my husband worked a job that paid into Social Security, so we get Social Security. He had an amazing life insurance policy through the government and he said, “I’m just going to continue it and pay whatever it is through this new company.” He took care of us. I don’t know why he did it. He was so young but thank God he did.

What I hear from people is, “We don’t get Social Security. They were contracted. They never paid into the Social Security. We don’t get that monthly. They didn’t have a life insurance policy, or they had a life insurance policy and it was an accidental death versus an illness, so I didn’t get the life insurance. I’ve lost my house. I can’t pay rent. I’ve had to move so many times.” It has been devastating for so many people that I hear from.

I’m very thankful for the situation that I am in but what I can tell you is personally, even with having all of the privilege that I do. I myself have seen that it can go away quick. You have to be very careful about your finances when this happens because you don’t have that secondary income. You have to make decisions that you would never normally make on financial responsibility alone. There’s other times where you have to say, “Screw it. You only live once. I’m just going to do this thing because we have to.”

You only live once. Do what you want. We have to live life. Share on X

We have to live life. It’s a fine balance between trying to do the trips and see the world and do everything that we wanted to do as a couple. As a family instead without their dad, versus I have to be somewhat responsible here and I have to continue to be able to take care of the children everyday. You want to be able to do all of the things.

Luckily, I have this job now that helps me because we were going to like 3-4 trips a year for the first 2 or 3years and it was not necessarily the most responsible thing. Now, I’m in a full-time position that’s keeping me a little bit more regulated. Even in a very privileged situation, I can see how this could get out of hand for people.

I never heard the term a privileged widow.

I’m not sure if I made it up. Do you ever have that moment where you think you made something up and then somebody else was like, “I heard this person say it.”

What is it? Was it a widow privilege or privileged widow? Which one did you say?

Widow privilege.

I’m in the same boat that you’re in. I am oftentimes apprehensive when I am in spaces for other people in a different position because I don’t want to be ridiculed because we chose to make different decisions. I know I’m very mindful of what can I do to help other people, which is why I do what I do. This is not everybody’s fight. It’s hard enough talking about our spouses no longer here and adding on top of the financial strain of our spouse not being here.

They have wanted to listen at first. They double down cannot handle where is at. The more resources that are made available for someone to deal with this because people may say, “People die every day.” You guys had this life. You’re a stay-at-home mom. You’re making less. You’re taking care of the kids. He’s doing that. Sometimes, people are trying to get to the next paycheck. They’re just trying to get to basically have almost just enough money to cover the rent or cover this other stuff.

Life insurance looks like something we don’t need yet. It looks like something we’ll need down the road. I encourage you. If you were eating out once a month, to consider having life insurance. It is the difference that will make in your life in the inevitable. It is not if something happens, we are all going to die. Anything else may be different in life. That one thing is going to take place.

If you’re the primary person in the household that’s making the money, you have to be the one that carries. You both should but you have to have it if you’re the one.

If you’re a parent now, a single parent, your children are going to have responsibilities once you transition from this world that life insurance would help them in navigating that. We don’t take into account how important those choices are and how they impact our life. I’m glad that you’re able to support the children for Christmas gifts because that could be the beginning, end, nothing or something with hope and happiness. It’s already difficult to manage the holidays when you’re grieving. Let alone for it to just be double down anointing because you don’t get to celebrate the way you used to when your parents was here. The day Jerry took his last breath, life then versus life now.

I was so numb and so shattered in that moment that I don’t think that I thought that things could ever be good or better again.

That is so important because people feel like that is where I’m going to be forever. That’s why I asked you that, so thank you for expressing that that’s how you felt then.

I hope if anyone’s watching this that’s watched my videos where I try to stay hopeful and not happy but hopeful for the most part about what the future can be or how things might get better. They know that’s where I started. I didn’t start like, “Everything’s going to be great.” No, my world ended.

Positivity. “It’s going to be fine. Hold on a little bit longer. It’ll be great.”

I’m not the Miss Rachel of grief. I’m not rainbows and butterflies on my account all the time, but I feel like I try to not always come on as super emotional, upset and vulnerable. I try to be like, “Alright, so this is maybe what we can do instead.” I don’t want people to be like, “She got it all figured out.” I think that’s why people probably message me. You asked that question. I think people think that I have it all figured out and I don’t. You don’t.

Every minute changes at the beginning. Now, it’s day by day and month by month sometimes. That month, I had it good and figured out. This month is total and it’s just is. I started exactly where everyone else did, which is I walked into this house and I was fine walking up to the house. The minute that I walked up to the house, that 6’5 man not being there made the house feel like a mansion and it is not a mansion, by any means. It’s a regular house.

It felt so big and I felt so small in that moment. The world felt like it was swallow me. That’s where I was. I was numb and I was not in a good place. I couldn’t eat for three weeks after he died. I was not in a good place and I don’t want to ever present myself as knowing everything or having it got like an understanding. I don’t want to be like, “She understands everything,” because I don’t. I still get surprised by stuff. I still get surprised by the grief coming at certain moments where I’m like, “That was weird out of nowhere.”

At the same time, my grief is different than other people’s grief. If you think I have it figured out, it doesn’t mean that I have it figured out. It may just be in your eyes of where you are at that moment that I do, but I can be right where you are if I let myself think for long enough about certain things I’ve talked about. I have to consciously make a decision of my kids want to go carve pumpkins. We’re going to go carve pumpkins. We’re going to go do that. I want them to still be joyful about life.

Your grief is totally different than other people’s grief. You do not have to figure everything out if others have already done it. Share on X

If I have to sit there and not remember that this is what we did three days after he died years ago and it’s a trigger to be at the camp. My family has a camp site on the river and not pretend going there every single time breaks my heart because it reminds me of how I had to take a shower just to go because I hadn’t showered. I was disgusting. I had to somehow get my butt out of the house and drive with my mom down there years ago.

Every time I go back to that campsite, I remember it like it was yesterday, in crawling into my grandmother’s arms who passed and her saying, “You can’t cry about this.” It wasn’t to be mean it was because she was widowed as well. I knew it would bring her exactly where I was and I know that now. That’s one of those things you can look back on and go, “She wasn’t trying to be cruel. She wasn’t trying to be like 1940s.” Awesome person. She is amazing.

My grandmother was amazing. She wasn’t trying to be hurtful or cool in that moment. She was trying to keep her stuff together because she can’t. I found that out for my aunt later as she said, “Your grandmother is heartbroken that you are having to learn what this is at 34 years old.” I know that now but I’m going to fight to let them go to the campsite and to carve the pumpkins and all of these things.

I will hear the words, “I miss daddy,” and I will say, “Me, too. I think about him, too,” because it’s what we hear every time we go there. We will comfort them. I will comfort them and we will have a good day. In my opinion, I can’t live life where I was on that day or any of the days that passed after it within the year because I will never be a functional human being if I do.

Managing Loss While Raising Children

Two more questions. Managing your grief and raising your children.

It’s fun. It was a matter of, because I took some time off after he died. I’ve worked off and on. I only worked like two days a week. I worked part-time after that for 3 or 4 years. I had the time to get them to school. I would grieve all day. I would give myself space for it. I had picked them up off the bus and we would come home. I give them space for their grief, trying to do something joyful with their lives and then they would be put to bed. I would be alone and the loneliness and isolation from another human would eat at me.

Not that I needed to be with a partner, but there is an intense need after you’ve had someone in your home, for the last ten years of your life to have somebody to talk to about your day. I would sit there and I would stay up until super late. Not in a healthy way, and then wake up with like three hours of sleep, get them on the bus and do the whole thing again. It was grieving when I would allow myself time to grieve. That continues still now. I’ll set time aside to allow myself to grieve.

Isn’t it 2:30 in the morning the body is remembering that this is when he left the house? Is a part of that? The body just stirs and remember things that we don’t always associate.

My body would not let me go to bed until that time was reached. I turned to Fran and said, “I can’t sleep. I’m not even close to it.” He went to bed and I kept looking at the clock knowing exactly what I was doing because I kept looking at the clock when he was in this room for the ambulance. Right after he died, I was so out of it. I had just intrusive thoughts constantly. Not like I want to hurt myself but memories of him. I would look at a spoon and I could remember making this meal with him. That is going to be your life. If you are new to this, that is going to be the life that you live, whether you loved your husband or you hated his guts. You will remember everything if you are anything like me, at least.

The intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideations are two different things.

I think people get them very confused because they’re like, “Are you having intrusive thoughts?” I’m like, “That’s not what you think it means.”

That is exactly why I wanted to lean in and say that. Correct me wherever I’m wrong. I want to give you a little bit of space to catch your breath. Thinking I don’t want to be in this world without my spouse is a normal thought because trying to imagine your existence without them is hard. Suicidal ideations is where I am now thinking of removing myself from this world and causing myself to stop. Those are not good thoughts. Those are, you need to run for help. You need to call 911. You need to consider a suicide hotline, get a mental health professional or call a friend and say, “I’m thinking about removing myself from this world.”

Intrusive thoughts are the thoughts that you would prefer not to think about that come rushing into your mind and saying you’re going to think about me and you’re going to do this. Those are three different things. I know you know that but as you said that quickly, I want to circle back to people that are reading because they’re reading this conversation going, “I heard the first conversation about her being a mental health professional the words that she saying means something.” I wanted to separate those three. What would you add to that with what I just shared?

You are totally valid and feeling like you can’t imagine the world going on with your person because your person was, in most situations, not all of them, your world. You revolved your world in your person that you were around this person. I can tell you there are many things about myself that I altered with my husband that have changed back or are totally different. You have to figure out a whole new version of yourself when you’re partner is gone.

The world itself that they lived in is completely changed. It makes sense for you to feel out of place without that person that you relied on to be who you are. It makes complete sense. It’s when you venture into, I’m thinking about hurting myself, these are my plans, this is my intent, I have made this note, I have a range for these things, I have a will and not just because it’s a good thing to have, but I have these things lined up. That’s when you should seek medical attention. Please do.

When I’m talking about intrusive thoughts, I’m saying all day, every day for weeks, it would be seeing something a memory of him. I started this whole campaign in my head up, I’m going to watch as many sad movies as possible so I can just cry it out and then I’ll be good the rest of the day. It’s PS I Love You. it was the big one. What Dreams May Come and We Bought a Zoo.

It was like, “If I give myself that space, the rest of the day, I’ll be fine,” which is a total lie. I’m sorry, that’s not going to make it better. It will give you a little bit of space to cry it out but you’re still going to cry if you have intrusive thoughts that’s strong enough to pull you into that space. You cannot predict and you cannot control grief. You can do your best to hold it back with all of the things we’ve talked about and all of the things that you can learn about online.

You can try but you’re not going to cure grief. You’re just not and you’re not going to be in control of it because most of the time, it has control. You can do things to make it easier. You can do things to make the impact of those grieving moments less but it’s not going to be something you’re just like, “I have my grief. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” That’s not how it is.

You cannot cure grief, but you can make it easier and lessen the impact of those grieving moments. Share on X

It’s interesting that you were sitting in the room where Jerry was at last as we’re having a conversation. How does it feel to be in this room as you can continue living?

This room is not that room unless it’s the 22nd of October, in my head. I don’t remember whose video, it’s killing me but I literally said, “Compartmentalization is the only way that I’ve made it to this point. It’s my survival tool. If it’s wrong then it’s wrong but compartmentalizing like this is still the room where I’ve done therapy through COVID and this is where I did therapeutic services that night on two nights of the week. This is where I first walked in and thought of it as my office.” This was only that room because it was the easiest room to use. That was along the short of it. If he had died in here, it would have been tainted and I couldn’t live in the house. I don’t think I could.

Thank you. I know many people struggle with being in a space in where there are negative memories or unhappy or sad memories. It goes back to you saying, “We choose on what we’re going to focus on in this space that we’re in,” whether that’s basis time or a physical location. We have more memory to choose to focus on. One of the interesting things about grief is how it can sometimes erase all of the good memories that we have with that person and all we can remember is the moment they die.

 

 

Once again, following through volcano ash to get to, I know those good memories exist. I didn’t make it up because when I’m able to tap into those. Though I miss him deeply, I do know this is part of the human experience and I have so much good to hold on to versus holding on into those negative moment.

Where I get most emotional is when I think about the happy thoughts and the memories. That’s okay, though. Memories at the beginning where I would look at a spoon and go, “We bought this that year when we had this sale going on. We made a big deal about it.” I would cry at that over and over again. Now, I smile at it and go, “We laughed so hard when you spilled those soup on the counter.” The things that bring you tears today don’t necessarily have to bring tears tomorrow. The happy memories can bring a good deal of emotion.

The things that bring you tears today don't necessarily have to bring tears tomorrow. Share on X

Sometimes, our brain suppresses with trauma, the bad memories but it’s the same as chemotherapy. If it’s going to suppress the bad memories, it suppresses a lot of the good memories too because the emotionality that’s tied into it. Slowly, our brain lets us have both of those back. Sometimes, it’s the bad ones because we need the guilt to feel better or worse or whatever it is that you’re using it for. As the good memories flow in, the response to it changes.

I’m not saying it anytime line. I don’t know how long that takes for everyone but for me, there are some things I look at and they will still bring me going to the campsite that I was talking about. It will bring me feelings. They will bring me somewhat negative feelings because of the situation and the timing of the year. I also know I’m going to watch my kids be happy and that’s going to bring me joy the way that he would want.

By the way, I haven’t said these words yet but he was the best dad. People say that and I’m like, “No, you don’t even know. My husband would have been there with the foam finger. He would have been taking his daughter to dances with flowers in her hands. He would play with those kids. He woke up and fed those babies when they were babies.” There was no like, “It’s all you. You to do all the work.” He was an active father. He was the best dad. When I see them happy, that’s what he would want and that brings me joy.

Originally, them being happy with like sad because he’s not here to see it. There are still those moments like big graduations and things like that. When we went on went to a trunk or treat and they were happy. It didn’t bring me sadness. It brought me joy that their joyful. Things transition back and forth, the ebbs and flows. For me, that’s my goal with this entire process. It’s them, their happiness, their joy and them being okay. That is my purpose in life now because that’s what he would want.

I have to ask you something. I think we need a different conversation to talk about dating or we have the conversation with you in Fran.

Can we do that?

There’s part five.

I don’t want to do a lot of that with him with me.

That could be your conversation. We don’t know how many these are going to be because I may have a conversation with Fran and we may go, “After he finishes that, it’s too much to put together.” We’re going to have another one. Any questions of me? I’ve asked you a lot in this conversation. I appreciate your willingness to be probably more than the words you started with. Now it’s like, I’m making out here.

It’s fine. Everyone can see me. It’s like the dream that you’re naked in front of everyone in high school. I’m just like, “It’s fine.” The people I care about know a lot of this already and there’s some people if they read this, I would have to go, that’s okay. As far as questions, no. Other than saying thank you for letting me process this with you. I hope that some little corner of it may help somebody that they know that they’re not alone in the caregiving process and grieving process. There’s more to come.

A Message Of Hope And Healing For Widows And Caretakers

Thank you for your willingness to have this conversation. I’ll let you close this out however you want to our readers.

Thank you for reading. This is not easy stuff to listen to, especially if you’re not a widow or if you are widow. It’s hard and you were a caretaker but if you are not a widow and this is something that’s new, that’s a struggle. If you are a widow and some of this sounds familiar, I hope that it is an indicator that you are not abnormal. What you’re going through is part of this process. I don’t know what your process will look like but please seek whatever support you need in whatever form that may be as long as it’s okay for you.

If you need spiritual, help seek it. If you need mental health, seek it. If you need social, friendship, and family help, please don’t be afraid to ask for it. I’ve been very lucky to be surrounded by people who want my wellness. I hope that you surround yourself by people who want your wellness. I know that I do, even if I’ve never met you before. Please take care of yourself.

Thank you so much and there’s more to come.

 

Important Links

• @Malmj5 on TikTok
• OkCupid
• @WorstLittleWidow on TikTok
• @It’sMamaLinda on TikTok
• Danielle the Hot Mess Widow
• @It’sMamaLinda on TikTok