Grief and Recovery
I’m writing because my life has been shattered by personal losses and an incomplete recovery over the past five years. This seems the right place to express it.
Five years ago, I was in Botswana, working on a writing project, when I received a Facebook message that my father had died in his sleep, peacefully in my mother’s arms at age 94. I had to return as soon as possible to attend his funeral and deliver his eulogy. I was in a small, remote village, and it took me three days to get to Charleston, SC. Those were the longest three days of my life. The flight from Johannesburg to the States is one of the longest in the world. It takes 18 hours, and I could not sleep. But I made it, and was there for my dad’s funeral, and spoke his eulogy. However, my oldest sister was revering from being intubated for a lung infection, and caught a new one at the funeral. Within a week, she was intubated in a hospital. Twice over the next five months, the doctors told my brother-in-law he would have to make the decision to take her off life support. Each time she rallied, and was finally able to go home. As her son said to me, “She fought like a tiger.” Because that’s the kind of person she was. I was able to speak to her on the phone, and we joked, as we always had. A week later she was back in the hospital, and her body was too frail to survive. She died, and for a second time I had to fly to the funeral of one of my most beloved people in the world. It’s triggered a phobia of flying I never had before.
Within a year, my mother had to move from independent to assisted living. I was able to visit several times. She was in a small studio/apartment, which at first I found incredibly depressing, but she told me she was perfectly happy there, which was reassuring. I always called her on Sunday afternoon after her naps (which she loved). I’m a freelance writer in my late ’60s, so it was easy to lose track of days. One Saturday afternoon, I suddenly thought I should call her. I did, and she was working on family albums. We laughed, and I said I’d call her the next weekend, and we hung up cheerfully. Ten minutes later, she had a stroke, and died. Once again I flew to a beloved’s funeral. By this time I was simply numb. I learned from a family friend that for three days before, she’d awoken from her nap to see my father sitting at the end of her bed. Although I don’t pretend to begin to understand religion, I can only say this is a reassuring mystery.
A month later, a cousin who’d been my closest friend since I was ten and he was thirteen died in his sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to fly to his funeral, but wrote a eulogy that my brother read at the service.
Ten years ago I moved from a farmhouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, which I owned with my parents, for financial reasons. I chose Colorado, a place I have always loved since I spent several months here straight out of college, and where I had three close friends I could visit, and who included me in their circle of friends. Within a few months of my move, my friend here in Boulder moved back East, so I never met his circle of friends.
Two years later, my friend in Aspen got cancer of the gall bladder and died, in his early ’70s. So I was no longer a member of the community there.
Two years ago, my surviving friend and the one I was closest to, developed thrombosis in his leg, and did not survive. He and I had a special bond. Thirty years ago, we were having a beer on Capitol Hill, Wash. D.C., where we both lived, and I told him was going freelance, leaving a staff writer job at a prestigious magazine so that I could live in Botswana, a second home for me, make natural history films, and write books, all of which I knew I’d never do if I stayed at the magazine. He said that was quite a coincidence, because he’d made a similar decision, to leave a high-profile consulting firm to live in the West, where he was from. We made an agreement to help each other professionally and personally if we could, and we did, many times over the following years. And now he’s gone. So I have no close personal attachments in Colorado. The answer to that is volunteering for NGO’s here, and I will, but I have to regain my emotional stability first.
I’ve just gotten word that one of my closest friends in Botswana has died. This may sound like a self-pity party, but it’s not. I’m simply shocked at the unending stream of losses, and need to put it down on paper. I don’t rage against the sky. Life has dealt countless people far harder hands than mine. But expressing this is one of the means by which I’m trying to stabilize. If I get replies to it, I expect many to be scornful or sarcastic. That’s water off a duck’s back, because I hope for some to be understanding, and am very open to hear others’ stories of grief and loss, and I hope recovery.
Professionally, I’ve written four books in past ten years, totaling more than half a million words, and brought out two on Amazon print on demand. A third I might find an agent for. The fourth I wll have to bring out on Instagramspark, but it’s specially designed, and working with two partners, it’s going to be exhaustive. So that’s a project to start anew in the new year.
Once again, I’m prepared for every sort of reply. But I hope some will be positive, and I welcome your own stories.
Thank you for reading this long missive, Doug