Tossing the Pain Into the Inferno

3/12/17

Camp Widow. Roughly 48 hours of 160 women and a few men sharing, connecting, remembering, rebooting at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel…. I’ll leave Tampa with so many thoughts and feelings about this experience.

I don’t actively count the months, much less the days. But the ribbon on my Camp Widow lanyard reminded me it’s been seven years and three months since I got “the call.”

That surreal call in which I learned that, in the cessation of a heartbeat, my ‘W’ changed from wife to widow, catapulting me into the group no one wants to join – what I, in a snarky moment, termed “the freakin’ widows club.”

In the aftermath of my loss I’d found my strength in solidarity with my friend Ann, whose husband John’s heart stopped 76 days after my Ted’s failed him. Others in my world have since joined the club, none as close as Ann, though. We will forever be bound by the uncanny coincidence of our losses.

I discovered Camp Widow on the Internet last fall. It’s a gathering for men and women whose life partners have died. Camps, not conferences, offer a unique blend of support, education, and camaraderie, brought together three times per year by founder Michele Neff Hernandez and volunteers who share a common bond. It’s a lifeline and a safe zone for campers ranging from grateful veterans who tout the life-saving connections to the deer-in-the-headlights newbies, some as young as my oldest kids.

I reached out to Hernandez about being a presenter, thinking my roadmap to resilience might resonate with the group. So my role at Camp Widow was principally presenter, marginally participant.

I try to focus on today and tomorrow. But being in that milieu, yesterday was everywhere. Being surrounded by so many who shared my loss was unsettling. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I was raw again.

We’re all students and teachers in life if we choose to be. I went to Tampa expecting to be a teacher. But I’ll leave Tampa with my student cap on.

For as I shared my “Three Steps to Better” presentation,  I had a moment of reckoning.

For seven years, as I’ve worked hard to leave the baggage behind, I’ve been lugging a carry-on bag that has gotten no lighter.

And it’s making me weary.

In my writing and speaking I offer an explanation for how I came to title my memoir “Bitter or Better.” I’ve given the talk many times. But in Tampa, something unexpected. Speaking to a group of fellow travelers, familiar, but unwelcome, emotions settled in as I explained how, faced with adversity, we can choose to be bitter or better.

The emotions weren’t the usual miscreants: sadness, regret, or loneliness.

They were the destructive emotions that strain my efforts to move forward: the entrenched anger and hurt, carelessly inflicted by a few people who are likely oblivious of what they did. People who said hurtful things or turned their backs on my children and me when we were untethered.

My mind gets it. Unexpected trauma ignites an inferno. People do, say, crazy things in crazy times. Yet, that intellectual recognition offers meager salve for the wounds. Nor does it alter this truth: that people appear strong and resilient is no excuse for thoughtless or heartless behavior.

So as I reflect on my time at camp, the takeaway is simple and terrifying: there will be no apologies from those who so wounded me, no effort on their part to reboot relationships. To truly walk the talk – my choice to be “better” – it is time for me to jettison that piece of carry-on luggage. 

So as I sit outside this lovely Tampa hotel, wind blowing, portable heaters humming, I’ve reluctantly accepted there is only one course of action that is congruent with choosing better. I’ll put pen to paper and let the nameless perpetrators know how they wounded not only me but, worse yet, my children. I’ll let the words flow and, likely, the tears.

And then, because I have neither the courage nor the will to send the letters, I’ll create my own inferno. I’ll toss the past into the fire. And, God willing, I’ll move on without the carry-on bag.

If you’d like to learn more about my journey to “better” click here to procure a signed copy of Bitter or Better. 

 

 

 

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