Living Life By The Ocean

Coming up on nine months since I lost Sam, it feels like just yesterday...and yet it feels like a lifetime since our hands intertwined and I walked down into his office and leaned over for a kiss while he was sitting at his desk.  Going to the same building each day to work is very difficult.  I still can't bear to sit on the couch at home where he sat most of last year and although I've  adamantly insisted I was getting a new couch, I can't quite bear to let it go.  When I'm ready, that will be the right time. There are two directions in life: backward and forward. Looking back, I am conflicted about the traumatic experience of what happened versus seeing where I am today.  Fast forward to today:  Through what I believe was divine intervention, our family was protected. So many friends and family rallied to help with food and encouragement. Each need was met precisely when it needed to be.  I look back in amazement but mostly with gratitude....

As the year turned over, I began reading a lot about choosing a word of the year to concentrate on.  So many words came to mind, but Gratitude was the recurring word I wanted to claim as my own this year.  There are so many negative words to define my last year, heartbreak, loss, deconstruction of my life, disagreements, misunderstandings....Cancer.  Why does gratitude continue to force its way into my soul?? Last year when Sam was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, I went into survival mode.  I tried to explain to family and friends how I felt about losing our livelihood, businesses we built while we were just kids, young parents, 30-somethings, but I am confident it can't be understood.  Even I have trouble grasping what has happened to me.  The depth of loss is just now seeping into the hollows of my heart where so much has been stripped away already with the loss of Sam.  I realize now that losing Sam was so much more than losing my part...

  Exactly one year ago tomorrow....life crashed.   How can two perfectly fine adults, one in pain, of course, but holding hands, walking upright into the medical clinic at 1:15 on December 15, 2016, possibly be prepared for the kind of news we were about to hear.  I picked Sam up at work and we went to the doctor's office to hear the results of his CT scan.  We knew it could be serious -- our daughter was recently in remission for lymphoma, and having lived through her chemotherapy treatments, we were prepared to hear that this pain Sam was feeling was something serious.  We were not prepared to hear the words that came tumbling out of the doctor's mouth without emotion:  "You have cancer .  It's pancreatic and it has spread to the lungs, bone," (other places I can't even remember due to my fogging out), and the worst -- "it has collapsed several vertebrae and that's where the pain is coming from.  It's the worst of the worst that I'...

When I hear the word "second," I tend to think of something that isn't as good as what is first, not meeting expectations of the best, a sort of failure.  But "second" can also represent a second child (which is a wonderful thing!), taking a second look can save yourself from making a wrong decision, a second chance at a relationship when things have deteriorated or of building a new life when divorce or death strikes. It is easy to become bitter and angry that life has turned out this way.  Anyone who has been through a tragic event can understand the rage and deep sadness that seems to envelope your heart.  Some days I feel paralyzed to even begin to know how to create this second chance I am facing.  I've spent the last few weeks in agony wondering why Sam?  why us?  How could this have happened?  Was I proactive enough with treatments, should we have gone to Europe for treatment, and did I do enough.  Why did he die?  I was in su...

Recently a friend gave me a CD to play in my car...she gave it to me right around the time Sam died but just recently I began to play one song on it that touched me in a way that I wasn't expecting.  One song in particular talked about Yahweh.  I've heard God called Yahweh before, but after listening to the song several times, I really wanted to know more about why this word Yahweh is being used. Yahweh is actually Hebrew for LORD...meaning "I am."  Sam and I have always told our kids that God is constant,  He never had a beginning and He will never end.  He is the ultimate standard of goodness and fairness in our lives and He is the standard of everything that is beautiful and right. This weekend my daughter and I met in Vancouver and spent time together.  We went to a craft show, ate dinner, shopped....but more importantly, we walked with arms linked....together.  We ate breakfast this morning and talked about her dad, my Sam, how he an...

Some of my most pivotal aha moments have been while waiting in a lineup at Starbucks.  Since this is my first post since Sam's celebration of life service, let me explain. The last 6 weeks have actually been brutal. When I first lost Sam, I actually felt that with time, I could face this uncertain future alone. Lots of friends surrounded me and I had tons of food in my freezer.  I barely thought about the nuts and bolts of life...Grocery shopping, cleaning and scheduling my day.  As time passed, family left, food was consumed and I found myself back in reality -- except Sam was still gone. I needed to get back to work, I needed to buy a snow shovel for the upcoming winter,  my Telus Optik tv blew up and I had to fix it. All the nuts and bolts jobs Sam did were now mine. I took a week to go to Illinois to visit my 90 year old father and once again, the reality of his dementia and deteriorating body took a toll on me. He has limited time left in life and here I am co...

Yesterday was Sam's Celebration of Life service.  It was a day of overwhelming feelings, great fear, physical and emotional waves of weakness and pain and yet, the day unfolded as it was meant to. Many wonderful friends and family came to honour the one man who turned my world upside down 31 years ago. I've had to actually start thinking about the physical reality of him never coming back. My brain played a few cruel tricks this past weekend, trying to convince me he was maybe away at a Rotary meeting last Thursday or gone to a chiropractic conference on the weekend. There just couldn't be a possibility he might never come back to me.  But facing the truth is necessary.  Thanks to my boss and dear friend, over the past months of Sam's illness, I've had work flexibility and I wanted to get back to work tomorrow in fine form but....I know I'm not ready.  I ask myself when will I be ready to start life again.  That question and many more questions are waiting pat...