Grief Sucks

Last night, I burst into tears in the locker room of the health club where I teach line dancing. I haven't done that in a long time, and it surprised me, but I couldn't control it.

We're coming up on the third anniversary of Robert's death August 2, and the dance class was a huge part of our love story. We met in my class and we fell in love there. The loss happened there, too -- he announced his cancer diagnosis to the class, kept dancing even as he got weaker, until he finally couldn't do it any more.

"Dance with Joan, and you're dancing with me," he wrote in a letter to the class when he needed to tell them he wouldn't be back.

The first year after Robert died, I cried after dance class on a regular basis. I also cried in private, in public, in my car. I cried in the park, at the DMV, at Trader Joe's, in the doctor's office, walking along the street.

I couldn't help it. It was like my heart caved in and squeezed out huge, unstoppable waves of sobs. I wailed, too, but at least I could hold back the screams until I was in a private place (though my neighbors came running once).

Do I miss Robert still, almost three years after his death? Only when I breathe. Only when I open or close my eyes.

Oh, I function very well. I write, I teach my dance classes, I travel talking about senior sex -- my favorite subject!  How lucky I am to get to spend my day doing what I love!

I laugh a lot and I make others laugh. I learn, I teach, and what I do helps other people. I do find joy in my life. It's a good life, I know that. I'm even kinda sorta dipping my toes into dating, as you know from my (very infrequent!) posts about dating, such as this one.

But I'm not done with grief, perhaps I never will be. Those of you who have lost a loved one know the grief journey isn't predictable. You can be doing just fine, and then, boom, you burst out crying in the locker room.

The emotional stab wounds close up, then rip open again. I know this is "normal" because grief isn't linear, it's cyclical. Thank goodness, each year it gets easier to cope. As my uncle, psychotherapist Larry LeShan who lost his wife of 58 years, says, "The knife still keeps stabbing, but not as deep or as often."

I didn't want to call this post "Grief Sucks." I don't like the term, and personally, I think sucking is a delightful pasttime and shouldn't be associated with a negative experience. But hey, this post wrote itself and insisted on that title. Sometimes that happens.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Moving Forward, but Not Saying Goodbye

Celebrating Robert's 71st birthday

"The task of saying good-bye seems insurmountable," a friend wrote after losing her husband one month ago to the same cancer -- multiple myeloma -- that ripped my Robert's life from him. I wrote this to her yesterday:

On August 2, it will be 3 years since I lost Robert. But I haven't said goodbye to him yet, nor do I plan to. I talk to him still -- and sometimes he answers.

I find joy in my life (especially now that my new book has come out and I'm giving talks and interviews), and I'm still startled by the realization that I can't come home and tell him about what happened. Then I DO come home and tell him about what happened.

Is it magical thinking? Denial? It sustains me, whatever it is. You'll figure out how to sustain yourself through this loss eventually, but that can't be rushed. Meanwhile, just be real with your children, and take time for yourself, even if it's painful. You can't skip that part.

I really, really recommend counseling -- as much as you can get!

If you want to talk, or go for a walk and let any thoughts emerge that need to, I'm available. Even if you want to say, "I'm not ready yet, but I'll let you know when I am" (which is what I had to tell people who offered early in my grief journey), I'll welcome your message.

Love,
Joan

I know that some of my readers have also lost their beloved partners, and I extend my invitation to listen if you want to talk. I wasn't strong enough to do this at first, but one little step at a time, I got there. So many people helped me when I needed it most that it would give me joy to pass it forward and help others. Email me if you need to share.

I wrote the grief chapter in Naked at Our Age through tears. It was very important to include my own and reader stories of grief, because part of love and sex at our age is, sadly, that one of us will lose the other.

Last week, a woman at one of my talks bought my book, saying that she had just lost her husband. I held her hand and listened, and suggested that she read the grief chapter first. "I already did, while I was waiting. That's what made me decide to buy it."

I welcome your comments.

Sharing Body Heat

"Sharing Body Heat" started as a blog post, then changed and developed into a longer personal essay about love and loss that I submitted to the Modern Love column of the New York Times. Modern Love rejected it.

Then I discovered Modern Love Rejects, a new website with a fabulous idea -- they would publish the best of the essays that Modern Love rejected! "Sharing Body Heat" appears on their website today -- read it in its entirety by clicking here.



Sharing Body Heat

by Joan Price

I crawled into Robert’s bed and wrapped my body around his. If I could only get close enough to make the last hour, the last months, disappear. If I could magically erase the despair, the finality of our separation.

I hugged Robert tightly, my own need to be close to him one more time overriding his lack of responsiveness. I wailed his name and listened to his silence, remembering his murmurs, his words of love. I nuzzled my face into his neck as I had many times before, but there was no warmth, no “I love you, sweetheart,” no kiss on the top of my head, no strong arms pulling me into him.

I covered his thigh with mine, snaking my arm under his pajama top so that I could stroke the chest hair I had first touched seven years before. I willed him to respond.

But he didn’t.

I willed him to come back to life.

But he didn’t.

 "Do you need some time alone with your husband before the mortuary takes his body away?" the hospice nurse asked me gently. I nodded, shut the bedroom door, turned off the light, and crawled into bed with Robert’s dead body....

Read the rest of this essay by clicking here.

"Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work," Robert said, taking both my hands in his and pressing them to his heart, looking deeply into my eyes.

It was three years ago -- end of March 2008 -- and we had learned that his body was succumbing to multiple myeloma. There were treatments we could and would try, but this conversation marked the countdown to the end, as I think back on it.

He would have one more month of health -- fatigued, but able to live the way he loved -- going to his art studio to paint, dancing joyfully, and loving me as if his life depended on it (and maybe it did). Then, as treatments failed, his back fractured in multiple places. The extreme pain led him into another world -- a world where love was not enough to heal or even ease the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. 

A world of preparing to die.

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

Our profound sexual connection had powered our relationship for our seven, soul-soaring years together. Neither of us had ever had a relationship as sexually exuberant or as emotionally satisfying! Professionally, our spicy hot afternoon delights propelled me to switch writing topics from health and fitness to senior sex. Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty celebrated our love affair. We married in 2006, the year the book came out.


We already knew that our love wasn't "forever" the way young people think of it. Besides being seniors, we had the challenge of Robert's diagnosis -- at that point -- of leukemia and lymphoma. Our wedding celebrated not only our love, but that six months of chemotherapy had sent Robert's cancer into remission. We were told we might have ten or more good years of health, a magical gift.

But we didn't have ten years -- we had two.

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

March 2011: Two countdowns shift in my mind. In August, I'll face the 3-year anniversary of Robert's death. (When does it get easier?) But before that, in June, I'll welcome a new book into the world -- Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex -- the book I started working on with Robert. In fact, you'll see that he wrote part of the chapter, "Unlearning Our Upbringing: Men's Stories."

I think at our age, those of us who dare to live and love fully have this balancing act between the sweet surprises and rewards of living our dreams out loud and the inevitable losses. Robert gave me the right advice: "Promise me you'll keep doing your work." It sustains me and brings me great joy -- as does sharing it with you!

Valentine's Day 2011

I always loved Valentine's Day with Robert. We bought each other gifts, professed our love for each other emphatically and often poetically. We spent the afternoon making love, glorying in the magic of  the powerful passion we felt for each other. We would love each other for hours -- a candle lighted even in the bright light of afternoon, the bedroom door closed though we were alone in the house. I can still feel the touch of his skin, the sweet pressure of his lips. I hear the love words he muttered.

Dancing was always a part of our self-expression and love expression. One of "our songs" was Anne Murray's "Could I Have This Dance?"

Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life?
Would you be my partner
Every night?
When we're together,
It feels so right.
Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life?

Every Valentine's Day and birthday -- and sometimes New Year's Eve, too! -- he danced for me:  a special dance he had created just to please and entice me. He practiced for days in private, choosing the music,  the choreography, and the costume that he would shed slowly and sensuously as part of his dance.

This is my third Valentine's Day without Robert, and the first one I've been able to remember his special dances without crying. What beautiful gifts he gave me throughout our seven years together.  What beautiful gifts he gives me still, as I remember him.


For all of you who have a special loved one on this Valentine's Day, glory in what you share. Never take for granted that "the rest of my life" means anything more than "this moment right now."

For all of us who are alone on this Valentine's Day, let's glory in the love we know how to give, and let's give it to ourselves and the people in our lives today. Let's do something special that nurtures us, delights us, even romances us. Let's make someone else feel special. Let's celebrate our capacity to feel joy.

I'll be celebrating with our annual "Line Dance Lovefest" in  my class tonight, where we enjoy two hours of line dances with "love" in the title (including one or two that I choreographed). Some of the dancers in my class are partnered, many are single, some have lost loved ones. But we come together energized by the exhilaration of dance and the camaraderie we've shared over the years.

Put Your Head on My Shoulder

12/14/10 update: I wrote the memory below last March 7, first in my personal journal, then as a blog post.

Later on, working on the last chapter of Naked at Our Age, I realized it also needed to be the ending of my book.

Today, I was finishing proofreading the designed pages that Seal Press sent me and simultaneously struggling to figure out how to make today -- which would have been his 74th birthday -- special.

As soon as I read this memory at the end of the book, I decided to share it with you again:

Put Your Head on My Shoulder

One day I was rushing about, I don’t remember for what, maybe preparing for a trip. I was stressed, crashing about, full of nervous energy. Robert caught me in mid-flight, taking my hand. “I’m so busy,” I protested.

“Just for a minute,” he said quietly, leading me into the living room.

He switched on the CD player, and Michael Bublé began to sing, “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Robert enveloped me in his arms and began to dance me around the floor. My body melted into his strong embrace and his graceful rhythm. I started to cry, feeling his closeness and knowing that nothing was more important than holding this man I loved in my arms. I continued to sob, and he didn’t need to ask why. He just cradled my head into his shoulder and kept us dancing.

I don’t remember what I was rushing to that day, but I do remember every moment in Robert’s arms, the feel of his chest against my face and his body leading mine until our rhythms melted into one being. Yes, just like making love.

I would do anything to dance in his arms again. I narrate this special moment to remind you to stop, take time with your lover if you’re fortunate enough to have him or her with you, and never take for granted that there will always be time later on. Now is all we have. Treasure each other.

Love Dances In: Dec. 10, 2000

December 10, 2000 -- ten years ago exactly -- turned out to change my life in every way: my emotions, my personal growth, my sexuality, my view of aging, even my career. That was the evening that Robert's life journey landed him in my line dance class. He had recently moved to Santa Rosa and was looking for a place to dance.

Here's how I tell it in Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty (the book that never would have been written without that eventful evening):

Love Dances In

The day that Robert walked into my line dance class, my hormones thought they were twenty years old again. His smile, fit body, and grace of movement caught my eye immediately.

Then, when he started to dance, his years of tap, modern dance, and ballet training were revealed in every movement, and I was lost at sea. His nimble feet, muscled thighs, and sensually mobile hips commanded my attention. I wanted to touch the inviting curl of chest hair that peeked through the open top buttons of his shirt. I met his dazzling blue eyes and pretended to breathe. For the rest of the evening, I kept losing my place in the dance I was teaching because I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Robert kept coming to class and danced into my heart. I tried to engage him in conversation after class occasionally, and he responded almost warily, answering me but not giving me any signals that my attentions were welcomed or reciprocated. I wondered:  Is he gay? Attached? Or simply not interested in me?

I started inviting him for walks after class, which he accepted. We talked, but never very personally. I told him about the Internet health book I was writing, and he told me about his art and the English gardens of his travels. There was no touching, no eyes locking, no double entendres, no intimate details revealed.

We choreographed a line dance together, which felt extraordinarily intimate to me. We were using our bodies to communicate and showing each other movements, which was very sexy. But the harder I tried to push to the next stage, the faster he retreated.

Then what? I am tempted to tell our whole story here, but I'd rather you enjoyed it yourself in Better Than I Ever Expected.

Now, ten years and a lifetime later, Robert has been gone for two years and four months, his life ended by cancer. He is still strongly present -- my house filled with his paintings, my mind filled with memories, my heart filled with love. I am struggling to move forward, starting to date again, opening myself to what life holds for me. I am forever grateful that Robert chose December 11, 2000, to wander into my dance class and that he found something there that kept him coming back.

“My head knows moving on is best, but...."

“My love for my husband was so great that I am having a very difficult time considering another man,” Jean, age 74, wrote to me. “My head knows moving on is best, but my heart puts up a very good fight. Yes, it gets very lonely at times and then, at other times, I appreciate the solitude. I do believe that at this age, finding someone with whom you are compatible from a distance is best. His and her homes with visitations rights, perks, and genuinely being there for one another sounds like a plan to me! Easy to say and difficult to find!”


Jean’s email came at exactly the moment that I was trying to make sense of similar feelings. I had a “date” with a man with whom I had shared an intensely sensual relationship 27 years ago, when I was 40 and he (get ready) was 23. We had enjoyed each other immensely, then both of us had gone on to other relationships, and he had moved many states away.

Suddenly we discovered that we would be in the same city last Saturday. With anticipation and fantasies abounding, we made arrangements to meet.
How lovely, I daydreamed. Here’s a smart, gentle, witty man from my past, who gloried in giving me pleasure, and we were always able to talk candidly. Surely the 27 years apart could be wiped out for an evening of sensual nostalgia, couldn’t it? I needed to rise from grief and rediscover my sensuality with a live person rather than with sex toys. This sweet man could be the one to take my hand and lead me there.

We met, we hugged, we talked excitedly about where our lives and loves had taken us in the past decades. But then… when the time came to kiss and discover… I couldn’t. I felt myself sinking into sadness. His kiss wasn’t Robert’s. His body type wasn’t Robert’s. I pulled away.

“I really hoped I would respond sexually to you,” I told him, “but I’m not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, cradling my head against his chest.

“I even packed condoms and lubricant, and chose my underwear with care,” I added. He laughed with me at that last revelation. “But it’s just not happening. I still miss Robert so much.”

“Tell me about him,” he said, maybe the sweetest comment he could have made.

I am grateful to my friend for his understanding, although I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe when I read “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be” on his Facebook page early the next day. I decided to laugh and post the comment, “Here’s to nostalgia.”

So when Jean wrote to me just after my friend and I parted, I had to agree with her sentiment, “My head knows moving on is best, but my heart puts up a very good fight.”

A Birthday Without Robert

11/8/2010: Two days from my 67th birthday, and I miss Robert terribly. He always made such a fuss over me on my birthday, cooking me a special meal (vegan mushroom stroganoff and vegan chocolate mousse, for example), writing loving messages in carefully chosen cards, and either buying or painting something special for me.

He painted a wooden cigar box to create a beautiful jewelry box to hold the earrings he delighted in gifting me. He decorated little boxes for me. He was moved by a story I wrote and painted a folder to hold it. He even decorated a cane when I was injured and couldn't walk unassisted.

Whenever he painted something utilitarian for me, he always included a heart, sometimes easy to find, like the box above, sometimes needing a concentrated hunt because he hid the heart in the design. He would watch me search for it, sometimes shaking his head because I was blindly missing it.  

The most wonderful gift was this Kimono painting he created for me for Christmas 2002. The hanging parts are painted on muslin; the "sleeves" are on canvas. He became well known for these kimono paintings and was able to sell as many as he could paint.

 

Then, having learned he had cancer and didn't know how much time he would have to work, he decided he would do no more kimonos, no more "pretty paintings," in fact.

 

Instead, he delved into his soul and his drive to develop as an artist and painted some of his best work. See it here:  

 

I know I'm moving forward after two years and three months wihout Robert -- new experiences, new friends, new accomplishments, even dipping my toes into dating. I can't bring him back, so I must live my life without him.

 

But anyone who has grieved knows that special days like birthdays and holidays pack such a punch that our gut recoils, our heart fills with holes, and the healing seeps out. Grief isn't linear, it's cyclical. Each time, as my uncle Larry Leshan tells me (he lost Eda LeShan, his wife of 58 years), "Although the knife is as sharp, it doesn't cut as deep or as often."

 

"To my wife on her birthday," Robert's final birthday card to me said. "Every day with you is more special than the last. All my love to you, today and always. Robert 2007."

 

“I’m Going to Make You Coffee….”

If you ask me if I still miss Robert, two years after his death, I answer, “Only when I breathe in or out.”

I still start each morning recapturing a memory. Today it was the way he opened his ocean-blue eyes in the morning and smiled, his face melting with love. “Let’s snuggle,” he would say. Then one of us would decide, “I’ll snuggle you,” and we would shift to our sides, the snuggler wrapped around the back of the snuglee.

I loved when Robert snuggled me, enveloping me, so close that we couldn’t tell where he ended and I began, if indeed there was a distinction. I would take his hand in both of mine, push my nose into his palm, and inhale deeply. His palm smelled of sleep, a warm, enticing smell that was totally Robert. I can still smell his hand, still taste his skin as I kissed him everywhere my mouth would reach.

Other mornings he woke ready to meet the day, his garden or art studio beckoning, no time for snuggling. He announced, “I’m going to make you coffee,” and I always responded, “I love it when you make me coffee.” He padded out to the kitchen to grind beans, boil water, and arrange the filter cone over a metal coffee pot that had journeyed with him for decades.

In a while he brought me coffee in bed with the newspaper and arranged both lovingly on a tray. Before bringing me my coffee, he told me once, he held the cup to his cheek to make sure it was just the right temperature.

He liked me to stay in bed while he had some quiet, private time in the morning to contemplate his latest painting or tend his garden, so he gave me a cowbell that he had decorated with a heart made of Japanese paper. I was to ring it when I desired a coffee refill.

The “make you coffee” ritual started early in our seven-year love affair, and persisted wherever we were, home or hotel, and whatever else was happening in our lives. Towards the end, when his body started succumbing to cancer, he told me, “As long as I can make you coffee in the morning, I know I’ll be all right.”

Then one morning, he tried to get up, and he couldn’t. He stumbled, his legs trembling, his back stabbing with pain, his brain unable to emerge from sleep. He sat back on the bed. “I can’t do it,” he told me, and we both cried, as I’m crying now, remembering the day that everything changed.

…Now I make my own coffee in his special coffee pot and carry it to the living room where I’m surrounded by Robert’s paintings. I write memories in my journal—snippets of sweet conversation, playful games we invented, afternoons that turned into evening as we made love as if life depended on it. Maybe it did.

Even though I write for a living, using a computer and all the tech tools available to me, I write my memory journal in longhand. Somehow writing longhand comes from the heart more than the brain, and I rediscover memories I had forgotten.

My hand lingers over the page, and I picture Robert’s hand –the artist’s hand making love to the canvas, the gardener’s hand making love to the dirt, the dancer’s hand making love to the music, and my lover’s hand--making love to me.

During Robert’s last ten days, I held and kissed his limp hand. I told him of my love, narrated memories from our seven years together, sometimes not knowing if he was asleep or unconscious or moving from this world to the next. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” I would say, and sometimes he would. Over the last week his squeeze became weak, then just a twitch, and then… nothing. I continued to hold his hand and talk to him, not knowing if he could hear me.

I still talk to him, and sometimes his words come to me in response. “Are you really answering me, or am I making this up?” I asked him. He replied, “It doesn’t matter.”

What does matter, at this point in my life, is that I’m taking with me the best of what Robert and I shared. That’s what he’d want for me, and what I want for myself. I find joy in my writing, in dance, in close friends, in physical and mental exercise, in learning, and yes, in my memories of Robert.

I hold my coffee cup to my cheek. It’s just the right temperature.

Missing Robert

I'm trying to work on my book, but as my birthday approaches, I miss Robert so horribly that I had to write memories of him. Excerpts:

I cried with Robert when we were forced to accept his death. His mind stayed strong at first as his body weakened. While he still had the strength, he prepared with the care and organization that he always ran his life. He got his affairs in order and cleaned out his files and his painting studio. He gave away thousands of dollars worth of art supplies to an art program for developmentally disabled adults. He made gifts to family and friends. He labeled files that I would need.

Multiple myeloma sapped his life from him while he still breathed. His back, broken in six places, caused him brutal pain. One day he drew the pain to show me. His drawing was so raw, so anguished, so horrible in its detail, that I wail aloud picturing it. I am tempted to share it with you here, but I won’t, because you could never forget it.

It wasn’t until Robert entered hospice care that he was able to be at peace, out of pain, and a loving man again. I owe a great debt of gratitude to hospice, who figured out how to medicate him properly and counseled him with great respect and warmth. They also gave me the bereavement support and counseling that enabled me to preserve what was left of my sanity.

Robert’s last ten days were spent in bed, journeying in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he woke startlingly lucid and sweet, sharing memories and words of love. Often he was only semi-awake, seeming to have one foot in our world and one foot in another. His comments were occasionally hilariously funny – he saw our line dance class dancing with llamas on a stage in front of us, for example, or he plucked flying books from the air for his granddaughter Megan, an avid reader, to attach to her eyes -- though he didn’t know why we were laughing.

Sometimes he slept for days, and I thought I’d never hear his voice again.

One day I was crying in my study, listening to his breathing on the baby monitor that hospice recommended. “I wish I had my best friend, my darling Robert, to ask for help with this,” I sobbed.

Then it occurred to me: I still did. Perhaps the man in the bed was a shadow of the man he used to be, but he was still there. I went to the bedroom, where he lay, eyes closed, mouth slack. I took his limp hand and whispered, “Can you please help me for a minute?”

“Yes,” he said quietly, without opening his eyes.

“How will I go on without you?” I asked, resting my tear-streamed face on his chest as lightly as I could so I wouldn’t hurt him.

He stroked my hair slowly, a whisper of a touch, soft as a kiss. “You’ll be okay,” he told me. “Reach out to people.”

Now I do. I reach out to people I know, people I don’t know. I reach out to you.

Grief and Loss in Joan's New Book

I'm working on my new book, Naked at Our Age, and I'm realizing the importance of including grief and loss in this book. Besides the fact that it abruptly changes then halts (temporarily or permanently) our senior sexual expression, loss is a part of love, especially at our age. Unless we're lucky (lucky?) enough to die at the same time, one of us will experience the heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, life-altering loss of the other.

Many people have asked me questions about my grief journey: other seniors and elders who have experienced loss of their beloved recently, counseling students who want to understand the raw truth of what it feels like, and friends and family who want to know how to help. My willingness to talk out loud and on the page about this, I see now, makes me a resource for others.

I never would have imagined that experiencing this grief would have some good come from it, but this is one more experience we have to learn to share. We're really not prepared for the emotional, mental, and physical changes we go through after our beloved dies. We don't know where to find help. Many of us are immobilized and don't ask for help. Our loved ones don't understand why "How are you?" is the wrong question.

So yes, I'll write a chapter or more about this in my new book, sharing my story and others' stories, with tips from grief counselors.

I'd like your help. If you have experienced loss of your beloved, either recently or in the past, and you're willing to be interviewed by email and share your experiences -- what it was like with your loved one, what it was like to lose him or her, and what has helped you reclaim your life and, if pertinent, your sexuality (because that's the theme of this book), would you please email me with "grief story" in your header, and I'll send you some questions.

Thank you.

First anniversary of Robert's death

"Will you be able to say goodbye when it's time?" I asked Robert softly, holding his limp hand in both of mine.

I couldn't tell if he was thinking about his answer, or drifting in and out of consciousness, or even if he had heard me.

"No," he said finally, without opening his eyes.

It was a few days before Robert died last August 2, and we both knew he was close to the end. Hospice -- such wonderful people! -- kept him painfree as his bones deteriorated and his body processes shut down. He drifted between asleep (or unconscious) and half-awake, sometimes painting in the air with his fingers, sometimes thinking it was time to go to dance class or out to lunch (though he hadn't been out of bed or eaten for a week), occasionally jumping into clarity for a few precious moments.

As Robert's cancer progressed, I felt trapped in a nightmare that I couldn't escape or rescue my beloved Robert, who was slipping away from me day by day, hour by hour.

Now, though, I am grateful that I was able to share this profound transition with him. I learned a lot about death that I never knew, never imagined. I also learned how love wins somehow, even at the end. Robert was rarely conscious over the last few days, but when he was, he murmured love to me.

Thank you, readers, for sharing with me the exhilaration and sensuality of our great love affair and far-too-short marriage. It feels right to share this part with you, too.

(Photos by Robert's son, Mitch Rice. Thank you, Mitch.)

If Not Now, When Do We Live Fully?

"Putting your own life/needs/emotions on hold can’t be healthy for you," I told someone yesterday, and it reminds me of how often I find myself saying that.

A reader writes that she has a sexless and even touchless marriage, but can't support herself financially so she's staying. A male friend of mine in his sixties can't decide whether his current relationship is right for him, so he doesn't decide, he just goes along. A reader in his fifties will start exploring relationships after he moves. A woman says she will feel sexier after she loses weight. A couple hasn't had sex for years but won't see a therapist because they think they should figure it out on their own.

I often ask people of our age who have put their own happiness and passions on hold, “If not now, when?”

If you’ve read much of my blog, you know that I lost my beloved husband, Robert Rice, to cancer last August. He was an artist, a dancer, a thinker, and a teacher to all who knew him. As long as he could stand upright, he painted in his studio every day, creating amazing art, yet always striving for that elusive best painting -- maybe his next. He painted some of his most magnificent work in his last two years.

“Do you feel like you’re living on borrowed time,” I asked Robert one morning as he pulled on his paint-splattered jeans and sweater.

“I AM living on borrowed time,” he told me. Then he kissed me and rushed off to tend his garden for a couple of hours before heading to the studio.

I’m making myself cry writing this, but I admired him (and admire him still) for always going towards his goals, his love for life and creativity, and his passion for love itself, even when he knew he was dying.

We all have a death sentence, we just don’t know when it is. As we age, though, we get many reminders of our mortality, some subtle (aches in new places, parts that don’t work 100% like they used to), some not subtle at all (a cancer diagnosis, a spinal or hip fracture, parts that don't work at all).

It seems to me that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to life itself to live fully, productively, and lovingly -- as long as we can.

As I reread this post, I realize that it's a lesson I have to relearn in my own life now as I emerge from the dark place of grief and make my way back to life, work, sunshine, and joy.

Thank you, Robert, for the lessons you taught me so well.

A New Lesson from Birds and Bees

When birds, bats or bugs make a turn, all they have to do is start flapping their wings normally again and they straighten right out. That came as a surprise to researchers who thought turning and stopping took more steps.

I was reading Science of flight takes a bird's eye view by Randolph E. Schmid from Associated Press and had to stop and reread this part:

...all they have to do is start flapping their wings normally again and they straighten right out.

I read this again, and again. I've been more deeply in grief this past week, thanks to an ankle sprain that rules out the usual daily dancing and walking that I count on to keep my emotional life in balance. Without this exercise and the joy it brings, my healing from grief took a nosedive and I find myself mourning Robert's loss unbearably.

Then I read this article, and I wonder how to flap my wings normally again and straighten out. I'll work on figuring this out.

How have you recovered from grief, tragedy, or even lesser setbacks by flapping your wings normally again?

Update a few hours later:
A friend encouraged me to get outside on this sunny spring day. I went to a park, hopped around on crutches for a while, then settled on a bench in view of the duck pond to read my Kindle.

Suddenly I realized I had a front-row seat to view a sex orgy: a consensual (I hoped) gang bang of six male ducks and one, apparently very sexy, female.

She took on partners, sometimes two alternating suitors bestowing favors in a threesome. Then she shook herself off and ran a bit, letting the lust-struck lads chase her until she slowed down and let herself be caught. The merry chase continued on the grass, in the water, and on the grass again, one or more males mounting her every couple of minutes .

Finally she backed up against a fence and stood with her tired (I assume) nether regions protected while the fellows returned to the water, rising up and beating their wings in what I took to be bragging.

I went back to my Kindle book, happy that I had ventured out in the sunshine, glad I hadn't missed the show!

Valentine's Day without Robert

My first Valentine's Day since Robert died seemed to be going unexpectedly well -- a deep and stimulating phone conversation with a close friend, time alone reading and dancing in my exercise room, dinner out with a dear and delightful woman pal, excitement about feeling my life force emerging strongly.

Then I came home. Alone. Lit a candle. And started to cry.

I remembered Robert lighting a candle in the same candleholder I was using. I saw his dear hand lighting it, the hand that would touch me soon. I heard his soft voice, saw his smile. I wrote in my journal memories of seven years of Valentine's Days, especially the languid afternoons making love as daylight turned to evening and to night. Finally, even the candle would burn down, flicker, and go out as we held each other and continued to kiss in the dark.

Tears streaming, voice wailing, I put down my journal and picked up a book of poetry, American Primitive by Mary Oliver. A friend, Uta, had given it to me on Robert's birthday, 4-1/2 months after he died, with this inscription:

Dear Joanie,
She is one of Robert's favorite contemporary poets.
You are very special to me and when you read in this little book, Robert will be with you. He loves you very much.

I read the book as if for the first time, nature imagery delighting me, then phrases like "loss leans like a broken tree" spearing my heart.

I had to put down the book when I read this:

...Now you are dead too, and I, no longer young,
know what a kiss is worth.

(photos by Robert's son Mitch Rice)

Six Months after Robert's Death

I've written about losing Robert to multiple myeloma last August and taken you with me on many of my steps forward. I return today, six months after Robert's death, to check in with you again. You have been marvelous, posting comments here and emailing me privately with your warm messages and your stories.

If you're a new blog reader, I'll update you briefly. Yes, this blog is -- almost all of the time -- about sex and aging. The reason I wrote Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty and started this blog was because I found great love in later life -- I was 57 and Robert was 64 when we met. My work changed from writing about health & fitness to writing and speaking about sex after 60. I decided to face full-on and speak out loud against our society's stereotype of older-age sex/love/dating as unseemly and icky.

Robert and I had seven years together from first kiss to last and I still feel him with me, especially when I teach my line dance class, where we met and where we continued to dance.

I'm dedicating whatever it takes to the process of grieving and moving through grief. Here are some of the tools and helpers I've found since I last wrote Discoveries Helping Me Move Through Grief three months ago. In case this helps you or lets you help someone else, I share them with you:

I've learned plenty from the counselors from both Hospice (Rick Hobbs) and Kaiser (Connie Kellogg) and although sometimes I entered their quiet rooms thinking I'd never stop crying, they accepted me with compassion and skillfully taught me ways to cope.

I took an amazing full-day workshop from Joe Hanson, author of Soaring Into Acceptance (available from the author). Among many gifts of that day, I was able to change my one-sentence "story" from "I lost the love of my life, and my life is and will be empty without him," to "I found the love of my life and learned how to experience love fully, and I take this with me on my path." (Joe will be repeating this valuable workshop, "The Power of Acceptance," on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009, in Larkspur, CA, near San Francisco. I heartily recommend it.)

I'm in a Hospice spousal bereavement group. The best part is getting to know other people who experienced the same kind of loss at roughly the same time. Because of the confidentiality of the group, I can't disclose much about it, except that it's helping me move forward. I recommend taking advantage of everything Hospice has to offer.

I've continued to reach out to loved ones and to new friends and welcome them into my heart. Being close to people who understand me balances my need for a lot of solitude. Extending help to others who need it balances the help I need to accept from others.

Each month gets a little easier.

Yes, I'll write that next book. Writing still brings me joy, and I'm no less committed to the mission I've established here. For now, I'll continue to indulge in short spurts of writing and when I'm ready, I'll take on the book I've been planning for more than a year.

Thank you for your compassion and confidences. Keep those comments and emails coming, even if I'm not as quick to answer as you came to expect.

Warmly,
Joan

Ashes to the Wind

Yesterday would have been Robert's 72nd birthday.

A year ago, we spent his birthday hiking the craggy Northern California coast which he loved, watching the waves crash over the rocks, holding each other as if we might never have this experience again.

Yesterday Robert's family and I retraced those steps. The day was blustery and cold, the ocean silver green under grey skies instead of the sunlit blue it had been a year ago.

I sprinkled some of Robert's ashes, and the wild wind sucked the ashes into the air in a dancing cloud. I did it over and over, my tears turning to laughter as each time the ashes took flight, like a magic trick, then disappeared into air.



(photo by Mitch Rice, Robert's son)

Discoveries Helping Me Move Through Grief

Robert died three months ago today. Although this post has nothing directly to do with sex, so many of you have sent me compassionate emails that I'd like to share what I wrote to my online grief support group today:

I've been working hard at finding ways to create some semblance of balance and -- dare I say it? -- moments of joy in my life amidst the powerful grief that comes in waves and knocks me to the ground. I'd like to share some things that have worked for me, just in case any of them might be useful to some of you. Feel free to add to the list if you have something to share that has worked for you.

Problem: Out of control crying had reduced me to a crazy, quivering mess and sometimes lasted days without a break, intensified by not being able to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time. I felt physically and mentally ill from the ravages of grief.

Solution: Doctor prescribed an antidepressant (for "situational depression" for six months), a sleeping pill, and a counselor. The combination has brought me indescribable relief. I still grieve and sometimes feel like I'm pedaling through peanut butter, but at least the elephant has stopped kicking me in the chest and stomach.

Problem: I knew journaling would help, but my writing fingers felt paralyzed for the first two months -- did I write memories of Robert and talk to him in my journal, or did I write about ways I was trying to move on? The two seemed to cancel each other out.

Solution: I started TWO journals. In one, I write to Robert and remember the special things he/we did and said. In the other, I write about my steps towards creating a new life: making new friends, insights from counselor and friends, little things that make me happy, if only for a minute. This has worked splendidly -- I write in one journal, then switch to the other.

Problem: Morning ritual was so special. After wonderful snuggling, Robert would say, "I'm going to make you coffee." He would get up, bring me the morning newspaper and coffee in bed. I would share something from the paper that might interest him, and sometimes he would just sit and watch me lovingly as I read, or he would go out to tend his garden. He painted a special bell (he was an artist ) for me to ring when I wanted a coffee refill. It was a glorious and loving start to the day, and without him, mornings felt so empty.

Solution: Replace missing ritual with new one. I cancelled the newspaper subscription (don't even miss it). Now I get out of bed, make my coffee the way he used to, but I bring it to my favorite chair that looks out on the yard and I write in my journal while I sip.

Problem: My world was Robert. I did much independently, don't get me wrong, but he was the one with whom I walked , danced, went out to dinner and films, talked about everything.

Solution: I reached out to old friends and made new ones. I thought about people whom I liked and would like to know better. Several had extended invitations to me, but I wasn't ready. I contacted them and made walking dates and coffee or dinner dates. Now I have people I can do things with, and they understand when I get tearful.

Dreaming of Robert

Last night I dreamed of Robert for the first time since he died. I had wished to dream of him, to see him again.

In my dream, I was sleeping and woke to find his naked body -- strong, no back fractures -- beside me. I sidled into his embrace, inhaling his scent (which I always loved, and which was vividly real in the dream!). Oh, he's just been away on a trip! I thought, trying to make sense of his beautiful body beside me.

Suddenly I started to sob to him, "I can't bear being apart from you! Let's stay together for the rest of our lives!"

"Yes," he answered quietly.

I looked into his dear face. He was gazing at me intently, lovingly.

"But how did you get here?" I asked him, suddenly thinking that our house was a long way from the airport. "I have your car!"

He looked at me puzzled and perhaps amused. Then he started to fade away and I woke up.

(photos by Robert's son, Mitch Rice)