The waiting is the hardest bit
Discussion
Russell I don't know you and have only found this thread this morning.
Your wife must have been a very special person from some of the comments that I have read from people who did know her.
My wife recently had to undergo tests and a biopsy for possible cervical cancer and it was the most harrowing period of my life.
We lost her mother to cancer and so we feared the worst for her.
Until the tests proved negative I pondered the future and as you have said it takes you to some dark places.
Luckily for us it worked out fine.
It has though made us far more appreciative of each other and at 45 yrs realise that we need to make every day count.
I am humbled by your strength and wish you all the best for the future.
Your wife must have been a very special person from some of the comments that I have read from people who did know her.
My wife recently had to undergo tests and a biopsy for possible cervical cancer and it was the most harrowing period of my life.
We lost her mother to cancer and so we feared the worst for her.
Until the tests proved negative I pondered the future and as you have said it takes you to some dark places.
Luckily for us it worked out fine.
It has though made us far more appreciative of each other and at 45 yrs realise that we need to make every day count.
I am humbled by your strength and wish you all the best for the future.
taaffy said:
Russell I don't know you and have only found this thread this morning.
Your wife must have been a very special person from some of the comments that I have read from people who did know her.
My wife recently had to undergo tests and a biopsy for possible cervical cancer and it was the most harrowing period of my life.
We lost her mother to cancer and so we feared the worst for her.
Until the tests proved negative I pondered the future and as you have said it takes you to some dark places.
Luckily for us it worked out fine.
It has though made us far more appreciative of each other and at 45 yrs realise that we need to make every day count.
I am humbled by your strength and wish you all the best for the future.
Indeed she was Your wife must have been a very special person from some of the comments that I have read from people who did know her.
My wife recently had to undergo tests and a biopsy for possible cervical cancer and it was the most harrowing period of my life.
We lost her mother to cancer and so we feared the worst for her.
Until the tests proved negative I pondered the future and as you have said it takes you to some dark places.
Luckily for us it worked out fine.
It has though made us far more appreciative of each other and at 45 yrs realise that we need to make every day count.
I am humbled by your strength and wish you all the best for the future.
Very special in so many ways. Lily was strong willed, determined, resourceful, compassionate and understanding, funny, clever, so very brave and a huge huge part of my life. Lily was without doubt, the better part of me
, the better part of Lily and Russell.Thank you all for your kind words and taking the time to remember us. I have not been back to this thread for a while now and I have only just seen these latest posting, so I feel somewhat foolish at being late in responding to all your kind words and for remembering Lily.
Two years have gone so fast. I look at Lily's picture every day and as time goes by my thoughts both of and about her have changed from grief to ones so slightly different. I wrote on the morning of the anniversary of her death these words on my FB page.
...
It seems hard to believe that today is the second anniversary of Lily’s death. Two years have passed in the blink of an eye…. and yet seem to have taken an eternity of time.
It’s hard to describe the feelings of those times. In the weeks coming up to Lily’s death, we had scant few precious moments together when something did not need to be done, or some pressing medical aspect did not need attending to. But in those precious, precious moments, we shared time together in a way that really mattered. Lily would smile and I would laugh as I told her some silly made up story of her teddies and she would write upon my arm I love you. I would smile and kiss her forehead and her eyes would sparkle in a way that spoke so very much. She would shrug her shoulders and twitch her nose and then something of my lass that were never far away – the parts of Lily that cancer could never steal, would emerge once again.
In the days before her death we spoke and wrote a great deal of things, mostly private and they shall remain for ever ours alone, but of those, two things I will share. One is her need to die quietly and away from those who would feel it most keenly and never be able to resolve the potential nightmare ending that was a distinct and real possibility. It is a great shame that those who bemoan ‘rights’, lack the understanding to appreciate that her needs came first and foremost and in choosing that path, spared them a greater horror.
One quiet day maybe a week before Lily died, I asked her about her early life in Abadan (Iran). She smiled a big smile and she spoke the words; parties and swimming and water polo and she remembered her dear friend Afshin and the countless others who made her life exciting and full of laughter. In those so precious moments, when I reminded her of the stories she had told me over the years, I got something back; it was the profound realisation that life is more than the sum parts of achievements, however great. It is the interactions and the waves and circles we make in the lives of others. In those moments of laughter, my loss was both lessened and yet made more profound. It is the ripples we make in the lives of others that are a measure of the affection in which we are remembered.
And today, on this day, where the ripples in my life are felt so keenly as saw toothed waves, I sit here and reflect upon how lucky we were to have her, so lucky that she gave her precious time with us and cared and laughed and shared and inspired and motivated and loved.
Once again I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart for all the kindness and compassion you showed us back then and me now. Life does indeed move on, it has to. Lily was a great believer in personal development. She used to say ‘what can you learn from this?’ even through the worst adversities of war and terror, she used to say the same thing. For me, now, what I have I learned from all this; that love endures, that it remains inside as long as you want it to; that grief never leaves you, rather than anything else, it just changes shape and form and over time become a more malleable negotiated position and that life is best lived away from those who would pour their turbulent vessel of unresolved misery upon you… but more than anything else, that it’s your life, so grasp it with both hands and don’t let go of the parts that really matter - don’t let them slip through the gaps of day to day dramas and frustrations. A toast to you Lida, Bache Abadani through and through; in chai for now, but a margarita later
To a life lived and ripples that endure for ever in the hearts and minds of a great many.
Russell
Hello.
Odd way to start a post perhaps, but it seems a hello seems more polite than just jumping in.
For some time now I have wanted to write a thread update as it has been well over two years since the death of my lass. Needless to say that for some reading this thread, it will be the first time you’ve seen it, for others, a thread that is perhaps in many ways, unwontedly ‘familiar’.
But, it’s my thread, created at a time when life in so many ways fell off a cliff and it needs updating to say what happens when you climb back to the top of the cliff again…
… and you do. Well, I did. I’m not in the same place, it’s not the same cliff, but life has, for so many reasons become something else and something that now has many more good days than bad; a life moving forwards,
When my lass were first diagnosed with cancer, the bigger part of me knew, from the first moment we went in to hospital that she was going to die. It’s hard to explain the rationale behind it – but a part of me I guess had collected all the ‘evidence’ of the severity of her condition and the realist and the pragmatist in me knew that it was going to be one hell of a battle and one that, considering the initial grading of her tumour was going to have a very poor prognosis.
That in itself is something that as a partner is very hard to process. It has been without doubt the hardest thing I have ever done in my life – to watch the sometimes gradual decline but more often, shocking catastrophes and horrible process of cancer at work. By the time some of those lovely peoples came to see my lass on our car day, the transformation made by cancer had totally transformed by lass’ finer delicate features into someone who looked completely different. What happened over the last weeks was the same again – the previous five months of cellular damage compressed into three weeks.
it was very hard to watch and in truth, as much as we coped and as much as I received incredible support from many wonderful resources, the end, when it came left me completely alone and completely shocked.
Shock… it’s a word that can only sometimes be understood in the context of looking back with the benefit of elapsed time. I think at times many of my actions and behaviours were born of the deep and profound trauma that followed. I would say that it took me at least a year before I even realised how I felt and what was happening to me.
I went back to work after three months – I have a job where I teach for a consulting company and when I stood at the front of the classroom I felt so vulnerable and exposed. (Fortunately for me I’ve been doing it long enough for it to be an automatic process), but those days of coming home at the end of the day to an empty house were very painful.
But… time does indeed move on and you have really got no choice but to follow with it. I could have become pretty much a recluse and let what had happened to me mar the rest of my life – and there are stories of many men who, when their wives and partners die, become just that; recluses who let themselves go.
In part I did for a while. I became a ‘mental recluse’, switching off from all those around me. In part it was a process involving ‘licking deep wounds’, but it was also a need to be away from people who, even with the best of intentions could not help themselves from saying things that were a constant and cruel reminder to the loss and stress I had been through – sometimes, people can indeed be really thick.
There comes a time in loss though when you do wake up and the world does start to look and feel different. For some it is like a switch, for me it has been more a day-to-day nibbling away at the pain of loss until life feels more like ‘life’.
I have received so much incredible support from PH friends. There are so many who I am so grateful for, from those who came one sunny day with their noisy cars, to those who to this day are happy to see me when I turn up with my very un PH car to all sorts of events. But to my very special friends, thank you for helping me turn a corner on life. Lamborari man – you know who you are; cheers bud, you more than most helped me turn a profound corner.
My lass spent her professional career working with cancer. She said to me countless times, ‘Russell, it’s just a process. Get beyond the fear of that and you will be fine.’
I did – I was continually processing that thought when she was alive and more so after she died. I finally understand what she meant…
… You see, when Cancer strikes those you love, you have a choice. You can run (part of you might well run), you can hide (and part of you might well hide), but sooner, or later, you have to face the numerous ‘gifts’ it brings.
Those ‘gifts’... and they really are gifts (in crap packaging as my lass would say) are that of facing up to what scares you most. You can do it humbly, you can do it with humility, with grace and incredible composure as my beautiful lass did, you can come out fighting, kicking and screaming – do what ever is right for you, but know this. For me, I learned to nurse, to care, to change dressings, to carry, to support, to be a constant aide and companion. It took me to places I never thought I could or should ever go. But in al that…
… better to look it square in the eye and say ‘f
k you, you are not going to fk my life over. You will NOT win.’
… after you begin to take that belief in to yourself, you begin to realise that the cancer ‘killer’ isn’t actually the cancer, it’s us letting it win over us. It’s how it impacts our lives AFTER it’s swept through reeking it’s havoc. At times, I let it win and I felt that I let my lass down and I let myself be so consumed in terror. Other times I WIN! and life afterwards is indeed an upward journey and all journeys have their days of three steps forwards and five steps backwards.
I have been blessed in so many ways. I am blessed to be alive, I am blessed to have been loved and actually to be loved today by a completely potty mad and lovely woman who understands more than ever I could have wanted in someone, what cancer is, does and has meant to both me and those around me.
We live our lives day by day. I sit here typing this with the sensation of the cancer monster standing behind me. It is big, black, hideous, dripping malcontent and grief. Yet, when I go out in to the sun, smile at my lass’ favourite Acer tree in the spring sunshine and remember how looking at that one tree made my lass’ eyed come alive with joy, that monster is instantly dispelled. The monster is my making and mine to dispel. I own it. It does not own me. It did for a while, at the beginning I lived in terror of it, but it got well and truly put in its place as nothing more than an irritation.
For those walking the cancer path, I salute you. From the bottom of my heart I do. For those who walk my path like mine of loss, and we are legion; yes we grieve, we feel that deep loss, but oh yes, do we remember and know this… we also live. We don’t just do it in memory for those now we love now gone. We do it for us. We do it because we can and because we should. We are the ones who fk cancer. We are the survivors who stand and face it down. We are the ones who live our lives and love again and laugh again and dance and sing and celebrate again and look around at all that we could be and say ‘this is me.
We are the ones who scream in it’s face; ‘You took something from me but fk you, you still lose.’
The cancer path has so many stones on the road. It is indeed so like the yellow brick road with many red mushrooms. But we are not Dorothy and this is not a fairy story. This is life. For those who stood and watched and kissed good bye, I salute you. For those who have risen from their place of grief and live again, all credit to you. It’s a long hard, painful road. But believe me, it’s so worth it.
Odd way to start a post perhaps, but it seems a hello seems more polite than just jumping in.
For some time now I have wanted to write a thread update as it has been well over two years since the death of my lass. Needless to say that for some reading this thread, it will be the first time you’ve seen it, for others, a thread that is perhaps in many ways, unwontedly ‘familiar’.
But, it’s my thread, created at a time when life in so many ways fell off a cliff and it needs updating to say what happens when you climb back to the top of the cliff again…
… and you do. Well, I did. I’m not in the same place, it’s not the same cliff, but life has, for so many reasons become something else and something that now has many more good days than bad; a life moving forwards,
When my lass were first diagnosed with cancer, the bigger part of me knew, from the first moment we went in to hospital that she was going to die. It’s hard to explain the rationale behind it – but a part of me I guess had collected all the ‘evidence’ of the severity of her condition and the realist and the pragmatist in me knew that it was going to be one hell of a battle and one that, considering the initial grading of her tumour was going to have a very poor prognosis.
That in itself is something that as a partner is very hard to process. It has been without doubt the hardest thing I have ever done in my life – to watch the sometimes gradual decline but more often, shocking catastrophes and horrible process of cancer at work. By the time some of those lovely peoples came to see my lass on our car day, the transformation made by cancer had totally transformed by lass’ finer delicate features into someone who looked completely different. What happened over the last weeks was the same again – the previous five months of cellular damage compressed into three weeks.
it was very hard to watch and in truth, as much as we coped and as much as I received incredible support from many wonderful resources, the end, when it came left me completely alone and completely shocked.
Shock… it’s a word that can only sometimes be understood in the context of looking back with the benefit of elapsed time. I think at times many of my actions and behaviours were born of the deep and profound trauma that followed. I would say that it took me at least a year before I even realised how I felt and what was happening to me.
I went back to work after three months – I have a job where I teach for a consulting company and when I stood at the front of the classroom I felt so vulnerable and exposed. (Fortunately for me I’ve been doing it long enough for it to be an automatic process), but those days of coming home at the end of the day to an empty house were very painful.
But… time does indeed move on and you have really got no choice but to follow with it. I could have become pretty much a recluse and let what had happened to me mar the rest of my life – and there are stories of many men who, when their wives and partners die, become just that; recluses who let themselves go.
In part I did for a while. I became a ‘mental recluse’, switching off from all those around me. In part it was a process involving ‘licking deep wounds’, but it was also a need to be away from people who, even with the best of intentions could not help themselves from saying things that were a constant and cruel reminder to the loss and stress I had been through – sometimes, people can indeed be really thick.
There comes a time in loss though when you do wake up and the world does start to look and feel different. For some it is like a switch, for me it has been more a day-to-day nibbling away at the pain of loss until life feels more like ‘life’.
I have received so much incredible support from PH friends. There are so many who I am so grateful for, from those who came one sunny day with their noisy cars, to those who to this day are happy to see me when I turn up with my very un PH car to all sorts of events. But to my very special friends, thank you for helping me turn a corner on life. Lamborari man – you know who you are; cheers bud, you more than most helped me turn a profound corner.
My lass spent her professional career working with cancer. She said to me countless times, ‘Russell, it’s just a process. Get beyond the fear of that and you will be fine.’
I did – I was continually processing that thought when she was alive and more so after she died. I finally understand what she meant…
… You see, when Cancer strikes those you love, you have a choice. You can run (part of you might well run), you can hide (and part of you might well hide), but sooner, or later, you have to face the numerous ‘gifts’ it brings.
Those ‘gifts’... and they really are gifts (in crap packaging as my lass would say) are that of facing up to what scares you most. You can do it humbly, you can do it with humility, with grace and incredible composure as my beautiful lass did, you can come out fighting, kicking and screaming – do what ever is right for you, but know this. For me, I learned to nurse, to care, to change dressings, to carry, to support, to be a constant aide and companion. It took me to places I never thought I could or should ever go. But in al that…
… better to look it square in the eye and say ‘f
k you, you are not going to fk my life over. You will NOT win.’… after you begin to take that belief in to yourself, you begin to realise that the cancer ‘killer’ isn’t actually the cancer, it’s us letting it win over us. It’s how it impacts our lives AFTER it’s swept through reeking it’s havoc. At times, I let it win and I felt that I let my lass down and I let myself be so consumed in terror. Other times I WIN! and life afterwards is indeed an upward journey and all journeys have their days of three steps forwards and five steps backwards.
I have been blessed in so many ways. I am blessed to be alive, I am blessed to have been loved and actually to be loved today by a completely potty mad and lovely woman who understands more than ever I could have wanted in someone, what cancer is, does and has meant to both me and those around me.
We live our lives day by day. I sit here typing this with the sensation of the cancer monster standing behind me. It is big, black, hideous, dripping malcontent and grief. Yet, when I go out in to the sun, smile at my lass’ favourite Acer tree in the spring sunshine and remember how looking at that one tree made my lass’ eyed come alive with joy, that monster is instantly dispelled. The monster is my making and mine to dispel. I own it. It does not own me. It did for a while, at the beginning I lived in terror of it, but it got well and truly put in its place as nothing more than an irritation.
For those walking the cancer path, I salute you. From the bottom of my heart I do. For those who walk my path like mine of loss, and we are legion; yes we grieve, we feel that deep loss, but oh yes, do we remember and know this… we also live. We don’t just do it in memory for those now we love now gone. We do it for us. We do it because we can and because we should. We are the ones who f
k cancer. We are the survivors who stand and face it down. We are the ones who live our lives and love again and laugh again and dance and sing and celebrate again and look around at all that we could be and say ‘this is me. We are the ones who scream in it’s face; ‘You took something from me but f
k you, you still lose.’The cancer path has so many stones on the road. It is indeed so like the yellow brick road with many red mushrooms. But we are not Dorothy and this is not a fairy story. This is life. For those who stood and watched and kissed good bye, I salute you. For those who have risen from their place of grief and live again, all credit to you. It’s a long hard, painful road. But believe me, it’s so worth it.
Russell: You cannot imagine how many people you have helped and comforted over this long sad, and yet strangely happy at times story. As it all developed it was evident that there were many here on PH who had met the beast, either themselves or their loved ones. I have lost many relatives and friends over the years, and have spent many a day in the palliative care units. A couple of years ago, on old PH friend (Hammerwerfer) was in a PCU in Dublin and I went to see him on the week he died. He had taught me how to drive the Nurburgring, something he was superb at, while I never reached his skill level. Yet , though we both knew we would not again meet as I had to fly home to Canada, there was a sense of peace, no self-pity, and we talked about how best to drive Pflanzgarten. His coaching and experience are still in me, and I never go there without his calm instructions coming up in memory. People do live on in memory, in full capability, and my old friend Ed will still be lapping somewhere in front of me next time I go to the Ring......
Thank you for your kindness, wisdom, and compassion to others even as you went through your own ordeal.
Thank you for your kindness, wisdom, and compassion to others even as you went through your own ordeal.
rog3k said:
+1 - definitely.
For me, it's not 'cancer' but mnd claiming my wife's life - not long to go now. Your words, Russ have been so real & comforting to me & I just hope I can come out of all this in a similar fashion.
Always here to lend an ear brother PHer. You don't walk alone. We are legion us army who stand, watch and love. We are legion and we carry our fallen. We leave none behind. From the bottom of my heart, my best wishes to you and to a day soon of peaceful kind resolution for your love. For me, it's not 'cancer' but mnd claiming my wife's life - not long to go now. Your words, Russ have been so real & comforting to me & I just hope I can come out of all this in a similar fashion.
Your story and journey has touched so many lives.
I still feel so honoured to have come to your wonderful wedding and it was a driving force to make us get on and get the paperwork done.
Without trying to sound like a right drama queen, meeting you both really changed my outlook on life and made me look at everything very differently.
It's lovely to see you living life to the full.
I still feel so honoured to have come to your wonderful wedding and it was a driving force to make us get on and get the paperwork done.
Without trying to sound like a right drama queen, meeting you both really changed my outlook on life and made me look at everything very differently.
It's lovely to see you living life to the full.
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